


Pale Tragic Fuck

by protagonist_m



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Happy Ending, Harry-centric, Jamaica, M/M, News Media, OT5 Friendship, Oral Sex, Original Character(s), POV Third Person, Recreational Drug Use, Travel, Undead, Up All Night Tour, hollywood sucks, like so much conversational fluff my god, perspective changes, weird attention to detail in some places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 18:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3420671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protagonist_m/pseuds/protagonist_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div>
  <p><br/><i>“No pulse,” Paul is repeating back to the distressed woman before them.</i><br/><i>She nods. Itches at her shoulder through her scrubs as she works to address the room as a whole. A blank-faced nurse stands to her side holding a clipboard she has yet to write anything on. “All machines both here and in the ambulance had him as DOA.”</i><br/><i>“But he’s not,” Liam says, frustrated. He’s fiddling with the string of his hoodie, eyes dark with confusion. “He’s—he’s right there, he’s</i> talking<i> to you.”</i><br/><i>“I am,” Harry agrees. “Hi.”</i></p>
  <hr/>
  <p>Less than a week from the end of the Up All Night tour, Harry dies. Somehow, they make it work.<br/></p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	Pale Tragic Fuck

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there, lovely people. A few things:
> 
> 1) Harry spends the vast majority of this fic dead. It's okay, he's mostly cool with, but if that's gonna upset you, this is NOT your story.  
> 2) This was meant to be 7k and ended up nearly five times longer. So. Clearly I create reasonable goals for myself.  
> 3) This fic draws heavily from Kumina, an Afro-Jamaican religion. I put in some research time to represent it respectfully, but obviously if there's anything blatantly offensive to someone practicing/very familiar with Kumina, I'd appreciate you letting me know.  
> 4) All that said, this is a work of fiction and some liberties have been taken with how certain (zombie-related) rituals may be performed. Also, there are various news and media sources throughout, and ALL are fabricated, with the exception of "The Ways and Nature of the Zombi".  
> 5) This fic explores the squickiness of both relationships with age differences (no one is underage, don't worry) and relationships with the undead. Neither notion is romanticized, but nor is it demonized. Do keep that in mind.

_“I suppose what was most surprising, after the first…like, initial…surprise of it, was how well they all took it. Like, incredibly well. The boys and my family and that. I mean they didn’t—it shocked them, right, it shocked all of us, but they supported me. Never once stopped. Yeah, so. I owe all of it to them in this…like…very, very real way.”_ _– Horatia Gordon Interviews Harry Styles,_ _"60 Minutes - Episode 17, Season 56." Los Angeles, California, 11 Jan 2024_

 

Charlotte, North Carolina is a bit sticky in the summer. None of them are completely prepared for this particular leg of the tour as far as climate—Louis’ changed three times today complaining of feeling “sweaty and sad-looking”—but there’s AC in the arena, and anyway, they’re pushing through the heat and humidity and end-of-tour exhaustion no matter what.

In a matter of days, they’re headed back home. While the end of their first tour (an _international stadium tour,_ holy _heck_ ) feels too soon, it also feels like it’s happening just in time.

For now, though, they’re goofing off on the stage of the arena set to house tens of thousands of fans.

Niall is plucking at Dan’s guitar absently while Liam runs harmonies with Zayn over the top of the strains of melody. He’s not planning on owning up to it, but it’s more to hear how they sound together in the empty arena without the others than to really practice.

Louis and Harry are invading each other’s personal space in the corner, sketching out the first rough ideas of a homecoming party at their house in soft voices that—acoustics being what they are—carry.

“Can’t you do _normal_ snacks this time? Oh pretty _please?_ ” Liam says, exaggerating his distress. “It’s always canapés and, and martinis with you two. Can’t we have just have a dip this time around?”

“And beer!” Zayn adds, winking cheekily when Liam shoots him a scandalized look. “Just normal pints, yeah? I miss drinking. Fuck the States.”

Harry remains stuck on Liam’s complaint. “We’ve never had canapés. Are you—are you thinking of the crostini?” he wonders aloud, staring off into the distance.

“My thought is Li can’t even _spell_ canapé, let alone digest one,” Louis muses. “Also! My martinis are ace, you all know it.”

Liam begins methodically unlacing his trainer, eyeing up Louis’ head.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Niall shake his head as he studies his own fingers on the guitar’s frets.“Nah. Too many ingredients.”

“ _What—?_ ” Louis begins, an explosion of indignant energy.

Whatever exclamation point of Louis-ness he’s about to cap the conversation with is interrupted by Paul.

“Backstage, you lot. Time to get ready,” he booms, and, sorry, but he is _definitely_ Daddy Direction, if anyone is. The five shuffle into a small pack, heading toward the stage entrance as he continues. “Niall, put Dan’s guitar back before you go, I’ve money on you getting through tour without him breaking all your fingers.”

“Your faith is inspiring,” Niall tells him dryly, resting the guitar back on its stand with utmost care. “Truly.”

“Aim to please. Backstage, boys. _Now._ ”

There’s good energy tonight. Liam would argue that there’s _always_ good energy between the five of them, that they’re made not just to do this, but do it together. He’s learned that there’s more to it over the last few months on the road.

The truth is that the five of them have settled into the rhythm of ups and downs that come standard with any tour, let alone one of this length. It’s felt like a marathon, really, each night a different, anonymous city and screaming crowd. It’s everything he ever wanted, but that also means it’s completely overwhelming.

Harry’s tried to keep them all anchored despite the blurring effect that’s set in. He insists on visiting odd little local establishments everywhere they stop for more than a couple hours, takes bite-sized videos of them all with his phone when they least expect it.

Louis gave in to the incessant recordings first and created a game where, every time he’s the subject of Harry’s shitty phone camera, he tells at least one bold-faced lie about the others to the soundtrack of Harry’s laughter.

Niall finally accepted the endless recordings of him in a state of undress with Harry’s faux-sensual singing in the background, though not before a tumultuous video that features the device being towel-snapped right out of Harry’s hand.

Zayn has acquiesced to chat on camera while sketching, even if he slumps over the notebook protectively while it’s happening.

For his part, Liam simply smiles and answers questions politely. It’s only upon later inspection that anyone else realizes he’s flipping the bird somewhere in each and every recording. Louis gives him an approving nod when he finally notices.

On days when Harry finds a moment to do his “behind the scenes exclusive all-access no-holds-barred video diary” (his words), Liam likes to think the enthusiasm is just a little bit more _there_ for the show itself. Like maybe the number of seventeen-second recordings of Niall wiggling into his trackies or Louis mouthing off or Zayn and him playing checkers that Harry makes on any given day are going to decide their fate each night.

Like maybe it reminds them that each day is different and irreplaceable.

Liam has yet to find the courage to voice that particularly flowery thought aloud.

Maybe there’s something to it. Tonight, the crowd is insane, singing their hearts out right along with the boys, laughing at their tomfoolery like five idiots falling over each other on stage is what they paid to see.

They’re bouncing around, kinetic and keyed-up and blissed out, really, reminded for the millionth time how amazing their lives are. Under each light sheen of sweat Lou will erase with powder the second they step backstage, the five are all grins, thousand-watt smiles for the crowd and the backing band and each other.

And Liam thinks, _I could do this for the rest of my life._

Zayn trills his final note in _Moments_ as the room erupts, a new wave of sound crashing into them as _Gotta Be You_ begins. Niall shoots Liam a manic grin that he returns. It throws him off-kilter still, how easily these four boys have become his brothers. How unquestionably they uphold that role.

This—performing their songs—is easy by now, less than a week from the tour’s end. It’s rote, but it’s far from boring. Probably, it never will be.

Still, Harry is always so certain his voice is going to inexplicably fail on his solos. None of that shaky uncertainty is visible to an outsider (Louis will inform anyone willing to listen that Harry’s a born star, at home on stage in a way that can’t be taught), but the boys _know_. They’ve seen him, clammy and pale and close to vomiting from nerves mere minutes before their performances, stuck in some negative feedback loop in his own brain and heart. It makes it that much more chest-swelling, that much more satisfying, when Harry’s voice holds steady and clear night after night without fail, sailing through his high note in the chorus like a dream.

It’s something to see, the way it rounds his lips, delicate curls brushing where his eyes squeeze tight as he concentrates.  It’s sort of devastating, Liam thinks. Mesmerizing. Yet another stupidly charming aspect of Harry Styles.

Which is to say: as usual, every eye in the room is on Harry as he leads into the chorus.

And so no one but Liam notices the stage light come loose from its fastening, a clunk like metal failing and a stutter of his heart. He feels frozen, hardly able to process what’s happening, let alone alert someone.

Later, Liam realizes it wouldn’t have mattered.

 _“’Cause there is nobody else,”_ Harry belts, sucking in a deep breath as the music breaks to give him his moment, _“it’s gotta be—”_

The light plummets. It’s a solid drop, weighty, both too long to escape attention from _everyone_ now, and too short to allow action.

The light plummets, and seventeen-thousand hearts plummet with it.

He doesn’t have time to open his eyes and look up, is the thing. Harry, eyes closed and voice steady and stance firm, doesn’t get a proper moment to figure out why the room is devolving into a different sort of noise. The beginnings of gasps. The start of a scream.

Sometime down the line, sources will falsely report that Louis’ scream can be heard above anyone else’s in the room.

Liam knows better. He knows that, in truth, Louis doesn’t make a sound.

 

✦✦✦

 

 _ **Nick Grimshaw:** Alright popstar, I have to ask. What was it like waking up after the incident in the States? After you…kicked it._  
_**Harry Styles:** You sound so uncomfortable._  
_**NG:** [laughing] It’s a bloody awkward question!_  
_**HS:** “After you, eughhh, kicked it…”_  
_**NG:** After you _ died, _Styles, better?_  
_**HS:** [laughter]_  
_**NG:** He’s teasing me! On my own program!_  
_**HS:** [still laughing] Sorry._  
_**NG:** The nerve._  
_**HS:** Sorry…um. What was the question?_  
_**NG:** What was it like waking up after—_  
_**HS:** Right, right. The old standard._  
_**NG:** Indeed._  
_**HS:** Uh, it was really…like, you know when you’ve been sitting down too long and go to stand up, and you kind of have that—head rush moment? Kinda dizzy, sorta…_  
_**NG:** Yeah._  
_**HS:** Right, so, it was like that, only it didn’t go away for…a bit. Hours. It was like—being numb everywhere, sort of, but lightheaded at the same time._  
_**NG:** Wow._  
_**HS:** Yeah._  
_**NG:** And what about emotionally? What were those first few hours like on that end?_

_—Interview with Harry Styles on The Breakfast Show With Nick Grimshaw, BBC Radio1, 17 Mar 2013_

 

For obvious reasons, the concert ends there. There are people crying—everywhere, stunned into a state of shock that Liam, for one, already knows their small medical staff will be unprepared to respond to.

Especially when they’re busy trying to revive the boy on the floor.

“Harry,” Louis chokes out, hovering over him. Zayn lays a gentle hand to his shoulder to pull him back so the EMTs can do their job, precise fingers pressed to Harry’s throat and then wrist, searching for a pulse, hovering over his mouth to feel for breath.

Niall worries sometimes that he’s going to be a bad dad, because he’s absolutely _useless_ in a crisis. Nothing sets him adrift faster than something shocking and awful and time-sensitive unfolding right before him.

He kneels slightly behind where Zayn and Liam flank Louis, still shaking and repeating Harry’s name like the saddest broken record in history.

The onset of his weird, terrible detachment also means Niall can already see what he suspects the others are still unwilling to.

It doesn’t even look that _severe,_ is the thing. For being nicked by a spotlight, Harry is remarkably intact. His eyes are sightless and glassy, but otherwise undamaged. In fact, his face as a whole appears to have been spared the real damage. Even his oversized bowtie is still around his neck, though the fabric of his blazer is destroyed by a spill of deep red.

His hair’s a fucking wreck, though.

“Li, what’s a…a frontal cortex micro-tear?” Zayn asks in an undertone, following along as best he can with the EMTs as they speak rapidly back and forth into walkies. A stretcher is being rolled over.

“I don’t—I don’t know,” Liam says, tone even and eyes wild when he looks at Zayn. He swallows hard. “I don’t know.”

“Baby,” Louis is saying now to Harry’s still form. “Love, _answer me,_ c’mon.”

“They’re taking him to hospital, their mobile equipment’s fucked,” Paul is saying behind them. Liam, Zayn and Niall swivel to face him from their position on the floor, taking in the look of tight determination in his eyes. “This place is already a madhouse. Get to the van, _now._ ”

Madhouse is the perfect word. Parents are wrapping their arms around their daughters, hauling them away through brute strength. People are clawing at their faces, crying like it’s their best friend or mother laying prone on the stage. Like this fear and—Zayn chokes when he thinks the word, hard and cold in his mind’s eye— _grief_ belong to them.

A flash of light grabs the assembled boys’ attention, Louis excepted.

It’s a girl, sixteen at the very most, eyes wide as she takes trembling snap after snap of them with her mobile.

They’re young boys, Liam will later be quoted as saying. They’re bound to make mistakes.

Pushing up onto his feet, he takes the efficient strides to the edge of the stage necessary to grip the girl’s wrist, stilling her photo-taking.

“Hey, love,” he mumbles, ears rushing with blood and pulling her phone out of her grasp mechanically. He’s not even really looking at her, eyes trained on the exits where the security team is struggling with the crowd. “I’m sorry about this.”

He winds back and hurls her phone against the wall of the stage, satisfied when he sees it shatter.

If the girl makes a noise of protest, Liam can’t distinguish it from the din of the crowd.

And anyway, he’s rushing through the back door after the rest of the boys and the stretcher.

 

 

Something about Louis’ demeanor—the desperation building in his eyes, the frantic clutch of his fingers on Harry’s blazer sleeve—has the EMTs caving to his fevered requests to ride in the ambulance.

He’s pressed to a corner while larger pieces of equipment are hooked to Harry’s body, machines trying to find his—his—

“Time of death,” someone is saying.

“Harry,” Louis croaks. He stumbles the inches necessary to hover over the boy’s still form, shaking hand pushing Harry’s chaotic fringe from his pale forehead. His eyes are blank and open, their palest green in the harsh light.

“Sir—”

“Please, he’s my boyfriend, just let me—let me—”

“Lllllll.”

“We’re nearly to the hospital—sir, if you can just wait—”

“I can’t, okay? He’s my—”

“Lou.”

“Please. Please just let me _touch_ him. He’s—my world, I don’t—”

“ _Sir._ ”

“Louis.”

“ _Please._ ”

“ _Louis,_ ” comes the voices, louder this time. Louis and the EMT startle, full attention on Harry’s body.

Harry’s body.

“Haz?” Louis buries his hand in the cotton of Harry’s white tee, twisting it around his fist a bit like he’s afraid of Harry disappearing. Harry blinks, slow as molasses, grimacing as he tries to sit up. His arms aren’t cooperating very well. “What happened?” His voice sounds like gravel.

For a moment, Louis is caught between hauling the boy into his arms and reeling back. Harry’s blood is still sticky on his collar, matting in his curls. His skin is still so pale.

His eyes are a little distant and clouded, a paler shade of green than Louis is used to, almost milky.  The flecks of blue are nearly iridescent against it.

They find Louis’ as unerringly as ever, though. “Lou?” he says, uncertain and small.

Louis all but flings himself at the boy, hands fisting in the back of his blazer. He can’t stop clinging to every piece of Harry he can hold, it seems. He sometimes feels he’s always clinging to Harry, waiting for this beautiful vision of a boy to disappear as magically and easily as he appeared. He’d feel bad about it, except Harry’s just as bad.

Not right now, though. Presently, it’s no contest.

While Louis is occupied murmuring Harry’s name into his neck, the ambulance comes to a stop. Louis refuses to disentangle from the boy on the gurney, instead opting to climb into his lap as they’re wheeled inside. The attendant bears it with something like resignation, hauling them down the hall to the ER.

 

 

An hour later, everyone—Paul and the boys, everyone who _matters,_ anyway—is sitting in a private room, trying to digest what they’re being told.

Their messy semi-circle of uncomfortable chairs surround the bed where Harry is sitting up and looking as plainly confused as the rest of them. Louis, closest to Harry’s bed, has their hands tangled together with his knuckles turning white.

“No pulse,” Paul is repeating back to the distressed woman before them.

She nods. Itches at her shoulder through her scrubs as she works to address the room as a whole. A blank-faced nurse stands to her side holding a clipboard she has yet to write anything on. “All machines both here and in the ambulance had him as DOA.”

“But he’s _not,_ ” Liam says, frustrated. He’s fiddling with the string of his hoodie, eyes dark with confusion. “He’s—he’s right there, he’s _talking to you._ ”

“I am,” Harry agrees. “Hi.” It’s a bit cheeky and a bit relieving, the way his too-pale eyes twinkle with the remark.

Louis looks him over again for the hundredth time. All cleaned up and changed into a hospital gown, it’s clear that the wound created only a superficial cut. They barely had to cut his hair to examine it and patch it up.

“Harry experienced a severe head trauma,” the doctor says carefully. “The damage to his _skull_ is minimal, but his brain activity shows clear signs of an intense amount of damage.”

“Okay, so a brain injury,” Zayn says impatiently, “we get that part. But he’s not—he’s not _dead._ Like. I can’t believe I have to say that, but you can _see_ he’s not dead, yeah?”

“Of course,” the doctor soothes. “He’s clearly—you’re clearly feeling pretty alive, right, Harry?” she smiles thinly at the boy. His answering nod is a bit slow, but it’s emphatic and followed by a familiar biting of his lip.

“Fit as a fiddle,” he says. “Um. I don’t feel brain damaged?”

“And that’s confusing enough, but it’s not what’s _really_ stumping us. The level of trauma you experienced was…it was a lethal blow.” The doctor raises a thin hand when Niall and Zayn begin to protest. “Harry’s pulse— _your_ pulse, sorry—is gone. Your respiratory signs are gone. _All_ vitals, actually. Including brain activity.”

“You’re wrong,” Niall says. It seems reflexive.

Louis doesn’t want to say it, but he knows she’s not. He’s become something of an expert in all things Harry Styles in the last two years, can tell when he’s about to sneeze before Harrydoes, and it’s clear to him that something is missing. Where Harry is usually a furnace, he feels cool to the touch. The line of desperate kisses Louis had lain to his throat once he was given the final all-clear to touch him hadn’t met a hammering pulse, or any at all. Even now, the boy’s slim chest isn’t rising or falling; it just _is._

 _He_ just is.

“See for yourself,” the nurse says, handing over the clipboard to Paul on the end of the row. He surveys it quickly, features settling into a stone façade they all recognize as meaning _damage control incoming._ He passes the clipboard to Niall, whose face undergoes a similar transformation.

Harry watches it happen to each of them, sharp inhales of shock or quick exhales of disbelief. He thinks about the act of breathing and becomes acutely aware that he isn’t. He takes an inhale, and the motion offers no relief from the odd static feeling that covers every inch of him, but it’s comforting in its familiarity, so he keeps it up.

Louis notices the slight shift, naturally. “You doing that for you or you doing that for me?” he asks, quietly enough that it’s clear it’s meant just for them.

Harry’s voice still isn’t doing what he wants it to. “Both, I think.” It sounds like gravel, as deep and raspy as it is first thing in the morning.

His boyfriend nods as if that makes sense, kissing his knuckles where their hands are interlocked. His brow furrows, but before Harry can ask him why, the clipboard is being tossed into Louis’ lap and he’s skimming it.

It’s unspoken but clear in the minds of everyone present that, for all this is Harry’s problem, it’s Louis’ reaction that the situation’s stability hinges on. He’s a lightning storm when pissed off and a hurricane when upset and the brightest summer’s day when happy. A force of nature in all his forms.

Louis’ eyes flicker over the neatly printed numbers and graphs that show nothing but flat lines. He reads it all over again.

“Lou,” Liam says quietly to his left. He sets a tentative hand on the other boy’s shoulder, thumb stroking small circles there.

“So what you’re telling us,” Louis says slowly, tone pitchy and eyes hidden by his wilted fringe. He hands the clipboard to Harry without even looking up. Harry fumbles it into his uncooperative hands. “What you’re telling us is that Harry died. That he’s—he’s dead.”

The last word is merely a tremble, a wobbling note in the silent room.

“I don’t…” Harry’s eyes trace the simple graph. “I don’t _feel_ dead.”

“So then what—” Liam begins, hand still digging into Louis’ shoulder.

Harry silences him when he continues. “But…I don’t feel especially alive, either.”

“Harry,” the doctor says, hands clasped to her front to keep from twisting at her fingers nervously, “as unusual as this is, it’s my sense that the biggest question now is whether or not you feel _okay._ Do you—do you feel okay?”

Everyone is searching his face for the answer, Harry realizes. He takes them in, the quiet nurse and befuddled doctor, Paul and his silent concern.

And then his best mates in the world, eyes wide and concerned and jaws set in determination to see this through. Steadfast.

“I’m okay,” he breathes out. The words are tinged with exhaustion, but it’s purely mental. Harry’s not—he doesn’t feel _energized,_ exactly, but he’s not tired either.

It’s possible he never will be again.

“Then I fear there’s not much else we can do for you,” the doctor says. “As soon as the paperwork is through, you can go.” She gives Paul a shifty look, clearly trying to figure out exactly how much paperwork the quasi-death of an international popstar will entail.

The boys are on Harry in a second, crowding into his space and making light of it through their strained smiles. Paul is talking in a stern voice to the doctor and nurse, something about NDAs and fines that the boys, only vaguely listening, are sure they’ll all be told about later.

For now, it’s time to get back onto the bus, where things make sense.

 

 

They do indeed get a talk with management about it. It was dumb to imagine they might not. Harry _died_ on that stage, of course they’re gonna have a talk with management.

Meetings are always in the same offensively trendy office, over-edited pictures of the company’s clients lining the walls. A picture of the boys—back when Harry had more baby fat and before Niall had braces and when Louis refused to wear anything but striped shirts—is the largest of all. Their younger selves beam down at them while the five sit in a tight cluster, arms crossed and toes tapping as the suit behind the desk drones on.

Strictly speaking, Phil is _their_ lawyer, but the way he’s speaking makes it sound like he’s far from their ally in this.

More than ever before, Liam wishes he and Zayn really _did_ have a telepathic bond like they joked about, because there’s a few aspects of this that the boy can feel spinning away from them, and he wants his facts straight before he opens his mouth.

He wonders, _If this guy is on our side, why is he threatening to sue us into bankruptcy if we tell anyone about Harry?_

He wonders, _Why is he treating us like we did something wrong when we’re the ones who made this company ridiculously successful?_

He wonders, _Zayn,_ can _you hear me? Hullo? Hullooooooo?_

“Liam,” says Zayn, and Liam jumps in his seat before realizing all eyes are on him.

“Sorry,” Liam says, a little shaky. “Sorry, uh—what? Replay. Repeat. Sorry.”

Louis snickers, tucking one foot under the other.

“I was asking whether or not you’re all willing to work within the parameters I just laid out.” The man’s eyes narrow, blond eyebrows giving his stare a rodent-like quality. “The others seem amicable. You _did_ hear all of it, didn’t you?”

“So it’s no discussion online or in person of Harry’s accident,” Niall jumps in as Liam fishmouths, “no disclosure on what happened on stage after the accident, or at the hospital,” he ticks off both points on his fingers, “and in return, you’ll lay off Lou and Hazza’s relationship a little.”

“Spot on. Although it’s not as if we’re _ransoming_ your freedoms of relationship disclosure back to you,” Phil says, leaning back in his chair, “but there’s precedent for a gay relationship in pop acts in a way there isn’t a precedent for Harry’s…state, and one may as well be used as a smoke screen until we get this new…development…locked down.”

Zayn and Louis wrinkle their nose in almost exactly the same way. “What, you can’t even say it?” Louis says, lightly mocking. “You can tell us never to talk about it, you can build the band up by erasing it, but you can’t actually _say_ it?”

“Lou,” Harry says lowly. His voice has shifted a bit since the accident, a little deeper than before. His large hand settles over Louis’ on his arm rest. Louis settles a bit, gaze still haughty on Phil. “So when you say Louis and I can _be_ together, you mean…”

“If you must be gay, it’s helpful that you’ve had the sense to be in a long-term, committed sort of…thing. Better for image when it comes out. When _you_ come out.” Phil sniffs, wipes at his nose with the side of his hand as the boys bristle. “We’ll introduce it in stages, but essentially you’ll be out by the next album’s release, if all goes accordingly. This,” he adds as an afterthought, “with the understanding that if and when you two break up—” Harry’s hand clenches perceptibly tighter on Louis’ “—you keep up the pretense of a relationship until the dissolution of your contract with Modest. Part of the narrative. You know.”

“Fine,” Louis clips out over top of Harry’s mumbled, “Sounds good.”

The boys shift in their seats, Zayn and Liam making eye contact.

Zayn knows he can’t _actually_ read Liam’s mind, despite how cool they both think it would be, but in that moment he suspects he knows exactly what the other boy is thinking:

_They’ve got us by the balls._

A month later, when Louis and Harry are papped holding hands in public, the media explodes.

The boys let the world believe that the biggest band in the world has had all its secrets lain bare.

 

✦✦✦

 

_Fans picked up on the intimacy of Louis and Harry’s interactions really very quickly. Rightly so; once we were all together in the X-Factor house, it was obvious to everyone that there was something between them. To be frank, watching that level of affection emerge was almost breathtaking, so close to the source. It happened in a matter of days, and very intensely, and quite permanently, as well._

_So I’d like to say it was a relief when they were allowed to come out, after the incident in Charlotte. The truth is that it wasn’t. Not always, and certainly not at first._

_They had a bigger secret by then. We all did._

_It gave them a type of freedom to stand by each other that served them well only a bit later on—the aftermath of New Years Eve would have played out a lot differently if Louis hadn’t been able to be there for Harry so publicly—but it also meant taking a blow to their privacy as a couple. Liam still tells me he has no clue what he’d have done if him and I had faced the same scrutiny back then. It was all so fresh, and we were all young. Too young, maybe, for what we were asked to do. The lies we were asked to commit so readily to._

_And we knew it. We weren’t adults yet, just kids who lucked out. The number of times that simple fact was disregarded is still astounding to me. Who asks a teenager about their sexual preferences live on national television? Disgusting._

_—_ _Zayn J. Malik, Boybandville: Inside the Early Years of One Direction. Harper Collins, 2030. E-Book._

 

“I—I’m not entirely sure how to answer that,” Harry says. His cheeks would be rosy if they could be, but as it stands, his now familiar pallor gives nothing away.

His stuttering might, though. Right now he’s staring down a nearly-anonymous American interviewer in the long line of American interviewers who he’ll have to speak to before he can fidget through this award ceremony in peace.

It had been going pretty normally, by their standards. A few wolf whistles when they posed for the cameras, Louis tucked neatly into Harry’s side for a round of photos, and then a string of filler interviews. They’re not nominated for anything, only here because their team said they had to be and they were in LA anyway. It’s a dry sort of hot, which Harry has learned he prefers these days. He feels temperature differently now, but not necessarily in a bad way.

“Let me, let me ask you something,” Louis chirps from his side, voice clear through the din. The boy has half a smile on his face, pointed canines pearly against his tan skin. His eyes are pure viper. “In what—no hold on, I’m truly curious—in what _universe_ is it acceptable to ask an eighteen-year-old what they like in bed? No, look at _me,_ ” he demands, tone firm.

The smarmy grin on the woman’s face slips as she turns to fully face Louis, eyes no longer locked on Harry like a cat on a songbird. There’s an urge brewing under Harry’s skin to flick her, which is both uncharitable and unhelpful.

“You’re, what? Thirty-five? Playing at twenty-eight?” Louis asks, giving her no time to respond to the barb as he grips the microphone tight. “You’re asking someone who can’t even _drink_ legally in the States about what they do in bed. Do you—” he laughs, high and searing, “do you _see_ how disgusting that is? How disgusting that makes you look?”

The woman goes to defend herself, fumbling out half an excuse and sweeping her long hair out of her face. The cameraman is rapt on the action, impervious to the jostling of the red carpet crowd.

“Viewers, uh, you two are quickly becoming a power couple of young Hollywood and many would like to know—”

“No no, no, don’t—no,” Louis is saying over the clumsy defenses the woman offers. “Just, admit it’s bloody gross, yeah? Don’t come at my boy— _boy,_ okay, he is _eighteen years old—_ with these questions. You really wanna know what we get up to in the bedroom? A stranger’s sex life is, what, it’s good entertainment? _Quality reporting?_ Ask _me,_ if you have to _._ But do _not_ talk to him like that.” He’s on a roll, people around being drawn into the gravity of his sharp tone and cutting eyes, glittering with pent-up infuriation. Louis clears his throat and continues. “He is not meat for you to consume, okay. He is not a sex object for you to get off to. He’s a _child,_ and you're the worst human refuse to play at anything different.” Louis exhales loudly, shaking out his arms a bit as he does. “So let’s stick to the other questions, alright? How’s that sound?”

The woman blinks twice before abruptly turning to the cameraman. “One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, everyone. A…just a lovely, lovely couple. Coming up, we’ll check in with Miranda’s Pre-Show Party. Miranda?”

Louis huffs, tense and twitching in his dark blazer. He grabs Harry’s hand and practically hauls him toward the venue doors, Harry nearly tripping over his feet. Alberto gets the gist quickly enough, effectively carving a path for them to the venue’s restrooms. He does a cursory check of the empty space before holding the men’s room door open for them and beginning his patient guard outside.

Louis murmurs to Alberto before the door swings closed and the two are left alone for the first time all day.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Harry says. “You never have to.” He trails his fingers down Louis’ torso, sliding them to fit around his waist and the divots of his hips like they were made for it.

The other boy shakes his head, arms crossed and cheeks bright with fury. “Can’t fucking stand how they talk to you. To _you._ ” He says it like it’s incomprehensible that anyone could invade Harry’s privacy. Like the last two years of their lives have been anything else.

“’S just a question,” Harry mumbles.

“About whether you _top or bottom?_ About whether or not we’ve ever let the lads join? What the fuck, don’t _defend_ that, Harry.” Louis is vibrating out his skin with anger. It’d be amusing to Harry if he hadn’t just seen his boy rip that woman apart. She’s probably crying as they speak.

As it is, it’s a little bit scary and a lot hot.

“I’m not defending it. But we get those questions all the time, in case you haven’t noticed.” It’s an old conversation by now, stale but for the way Louis is always set off by different comments, ranging from ones regarding Harry’s mental ability since the accident to an endless parade of questions about what, exactly, Harry likes in his arse.

 “I meant what I said,” Louis spits. “You’re _not_ meat, you’re—I love you, but you’re a _child,_ still. They, they can’t—they shouldn’t be asking that stuff. Shouldn’t even be _wondering_ it.”

“If I were really a child,” Harry says softly, thumbs pushing under Louis’ dark button-down, rucking it up from where it’s neatly tucked in. He circles the muscles of Louis’ abdomen, fingers catching on his braces every few rotations. “I doubt you’d be dicking me in the first place. The interviews—it’s an invasion and it’s fucking annoying, but if I’m old enough to do it…old enough to be part of this whole, y’know, fame machine…I’ve gotta be old enough to talk about it. And, Lou—” he presses their foreheads together, feels the warmth of Louis’ skin acutely “—is it possible you only hate those questions so much because there’s this…other, bigger, secret?”

“So analytical, you are,” Louis murmurs into their shared space. “And—maybe? I don’t know. Not—not entirely. Just never want anybody talking about what goes in your arse except me.”

Harry hums his agreement, cradling Louis’ head in his massive hands and leaning down to kiss him. He’d been growing like a weed before Charlotte, already pulling even with Liam. He’s not grown an inch since.

Louis makes a sweet, high noise, coaxing Harry’s mouth open.

When Louis is tense and pissed off and Harry feels beaten down by the endlessly invasive questions, it’s a godsend to have this part of them left to enjoy. Harry thinks Louis has handled the changes the summer has thrown at them, death and then non-death and coming out and the next album, with remarkable calm. Louis is nearly 100% certain that without Harry’s anchoring presence, steadfast despite his own struggles, he’d have quit the band by now.

Or been asked to leave. Whichever.

“Wanna,” Louis breathes into the deepening kiss, hands gripping into Harry’s arse.

“Yeah,” Harry whispers back, mindful of Alberto outside the door. “Should we go—?”

“Told ‘im not to let anyone in,” Louis says. “Need a break. Don’t you?”

Harry’s smile is wry, dimple appearing. “Always need a break.”

Louis nods, frowning sympathetically, before palming at Harry through his tight trousers. He can feel his cock filling through the expensive material.

It’s not clear what the rules of Harry’s condition are. He doesn’t produce body heat, but he hasn’t gone cold, either, just a sort of room temperature that, while disorienting, the boys have all come to accept. It certainly hasn’t affected their ability to pile onto him for cuddles at all.

Harry doesn’t seem to _need_ to sleep or eat, can go indefinitely without either, but he always appears a bit more lively after he has, which could be physical or mental. His brain is clearly still online, generating bad puns and sweet words of support for his friends as effortlessly as ever, but his pulse is gone, and he draws breath in to create speech, not because of any intrinsic need for oxygen.

He can still get hard. He can still taste and feel, still hears and smells and sees just fine, though his eyes refuse to return to their original, earthy jade. They’ve settled into a pale, milky green that sits well against his equally moon-pale skin and contrasts with the dark wine of his mouth.

The shift in Harry’s voice was probably the most immediately devastating. The second week back in London after Charlotte, after concerned family had checked in to see that Harry was perfectly functional, if not a bit changed, Louis had found Harry on the floor of the bathroom, body shaking as he cried without tears .

“Baby?” Louis’d said, shuffling into the small space and standing over the boy, tentative.

“My voice is—I can’t _sing,_ Lou,” Harry had whimpered, expression devastated and haunting when he looked up. “I can’t...”

And he’d opened his mouth to prove it, right there on the dark rug they’d picked out together for their ensuite. He moved over the notes of an easy lullaby like a jagged fingernail on tender flesh, alarmingly uneven and dissonant.

Louis had fought a flinch, hearing the shattered remains of Harry’s voice. His heart broke for the way Harry dissolved into dry, despondent sobs, shoulders shaking, when Louis went to wrap his arms around him.

He called Zayn immediately after tucking Harry under a blanket on the couch with a cup of tea, instructing the miserable boy to put on a movie.

“He sounds _awful,_ Zayn,” he’d muttered frantically into the phone, eyeing the doorway of the den to make sure Harry wasn’t listening. “Like—it’s like he gargled broken glass, he sounds _horrible._ ”

“Fuck.” He could practically see the distraught set of Zayn’s mouth, feel his sympathy for Harry. “Is he okay? Is he feeling okay? That’s— _fuck,_ poor Harry.”

“He’s destroyed over it, to be quite honest,” Louis confided. “Never seen him this upset.” He fiddled with a loose thread on his worn-in hoodie, leaning heavily against the wall of the kitchen. “He’s so _sad._ ”

With good reason. “That’s basically his soul, there, isn’t it,” Zayn mused unhappily. “Poor Hazza.”

“What do I do?” Louis asked. He heard a whimper from the den, peeked his head around the corner to see Harry burying his miserable face into one of the couch’s squashy pillows.

“Fuck if I know. Is—surgery is out of the question, yeah?” Zayn asked.

Louis shook his head. “Doc Pierson said surgeries are impossible for a—for Harry,” he finished, narrowly avoiding the word the American doctor had used. _Corpse._ It didn’t feel right with Harry, even if it technically was.

 “Right, right,” Zayn said over top Louis’ words. “I don’t know. I don’t—I don’t know. Hey,” he added, cutting off the beginning of Louis’ nervous rambling, “we’ll see it through, yeah? The lads and I, we’re—we love Harry. We love you. We’re not going anywhere, alright?”

Louis croaked out a quiet _Okay, love you,_ as they hung up, wiping swiftly at the hot tears that dripped down his cheeks.

Harry was still a despondent lump on the couch, lean body drawn into itself as he stared dully at the telly screen, when Louis returned.

“Hey,” he said quietly, kneeling in front of the boy. The plush cream carpet was scratchy on his ankle, and he struggled to itch at it while making eye contact.

“I’ve fucked it up for everyone,” Harry responded, no preamble needed. “All of this was getting _so_ good, and I—”

“You didn’t mess up anything for anyone,” Louis soothed. “We all still love you so much, H.” When Harry looked unconvinced, he added, “You’re more than your ability to sing pop songs, y’know.”

“Don’t lie,” Harry whined, turning around so his back was to Louis. “I’m _dead,_ not dumb.”

Louis flinched at the word. Pressed on regardless. “Keep singing anyway.”

That caught Harry’s attention. He craned his neck to look at Louis out of the corner of his eye. “Why would I do that?”

The telly chattered on in the background, cheerful muted sounds, while Louis swallowed and tried to explain.

“I just—it matters to you. Singing. You loved it as a kid, you loved it before you knew to question whether you were good or not. Harry, I’d love your voice even if it set dogs off _howling._ Please, please don’t stop because of this.” Louis breathed in slowly before continuing, voice thick. “Don’t ever stop.”

Harry’s face crumpled, pulling Louis into him despite their perpendicular orientations. “I love you, Louis Tomlinson,” he rumbled into Louis’ neck, lips cool and soft.

And it had been the strangest thing, magic or luck or even just a lucky break. Exactly a week after their talk, Harry had come careening into their bedroom after his shower, towel abandoned behind him, face-splitting grin barely allowing him to get out, “Louis, _listen._ ”

Louis knew Harry had been singing, still, quietly under his breath when he cooked or louder when no one save Louis was around to hear it, but he fairly belted out the quick run, notes ringing against their high ceilings.

The run was unfamiliar, intense and lively and so very _Harry_ Louis suspected it was something the boy had been working on himself. It sounded like the sweep of a cello’s strings, rich and deep, smooth as their zillion thread count sheets. It made warmth thrum through Louis’ body, made his skin break out in gooseflesh. It made his heart soar and his throat tighten.

Harry had sounded, actually, better than he had before the accident. He sounded near _mythical._

So that was all well and good. One less disaster to manage, anyway.

However, it did mean they were still fast-tracking the second album’s release in autumn, as well as the beginning of their tour in the spring.

Which meant they had to keep showing up to red carpet events and interviews, had to keep fielding questions too invasive to believe.

In the venue restroom, Harry sinks to his knees delicately, wary of the hard tile.

“Oh—you don’t have to—” Louis starts, but he’s caught by the image in the mirror of Harry’s artful curls—always styled by Lou to hide the oddly-healed scar on the back of his head where the spotlight had struck—and Harry’s broad shoulders in his expensive suit as he begins to work over Louis with his mouth.

“Want to,” Harry assures him, eyelashes fluttering lazily as he mouths at Louis’ dick. “Always want to.”

He doesn’t waste any more breath on reassurances.

There had been an initial, fumbling inventory of just how drastically Harry’s altered state would affect their sex lives, only days after the accident. Against all odds, logic, and scientific principles, it changed a remarkably small amount about the physicality of it all.

Still, it’s opened up a wealth of existential inquiries that the boys—Harry and Louis in particular, but also Niall and Liam and Zayn, often forced into close quarters with them—are hard-pressed to answer adequately. Harry is _dead,_ has a certificate indicating such and a lack of pulse to confirm it, yet he still feels everything just the same. Wild lust and searing desire and occasional, unproductive horniness that makes his skin itch, it’s all still _right there._

And he’s still the boy Louis loves, still a man in all the ways that matter, really, but—it _does_ open up strange moral quandaries. Louis would never, _never_ violate a corpse. It’s not a statement he thought he’d ever have to make, as he figured it went without saying, but for the record? He would _never._

It’s just that Harry’s still responsive, and Harry’s still his boyfriend, and for how dead he is mostly Louis is aware of how dead he _isn’t,_ erection poking his arse first thing in the morning and breathy moans ghosting out from between Harry’s dark lips.

It’s an unbelievable situation already; Louis has said time and time again he’s willing to suspend his disbelief just a little bit farther.

After the messy blowjob—Harry is undisputed _king_ of messy blowjobs—Louis jerks him hard and fast with a slick palm, mindful of the time and the way Harry’s groaning a honeyed string of pleas into his neck.

Their cleanup is rushed, Alberto’s terse knock indicating that they need to be in their seats for the ceremony any minute now. They give themselves a moment to recoup, soft kisses and fingers on the nape of each other’s necks, before they return to the real world, where interviewers accost the barely legal and the living dead are seated next to Katy Perry at award shows.

 

✦✦✦

 

_Styles was last seen entering his New York City hotel by his security detail Monday evening in preparation for a New Years Eve date with boyfriend and band mate Louis Tomlinson, who arrived to the scene only moments after Styles’ abduction. The security breach occurred when a commotion in the car park drew the attention of Styles’ bodyguard away from the young millionaire. His abductors, seen in video footage waiting inside a plateless silver 2011 Toyota Corolla, then placed a bag over his head and wrestled him into the backseat before driving away._

_Any tips leading to Styles’ location and safe return, as well as apprehension of his abductors, will be met with a reward of £31,000 ($50,000)._

_More on this story as it develops._

— _“Authorities Begin Search for Harry Styles of One Direction, Abducted from NYC Hotel Room." Annie Gwynn, British Broadcasting Channel, 31 Dec 2012_

 

The tension radiating off Louis would be enough to get under the Dalai Lama’s skin. The boys all feel it, a brittle layer on the ache of their long, chartered flight into New York in the darkest part of the morning.

Still, they’d rather be here than not. Louis had called Liam before any network could break the story, hysterical as he spilled out mixed details.

“Harry—girls in a car—he’s _gone,_ they didn’t—” he tried, voice high and shaking.

Liam, near dozing off after the New Year’s party in London, sat up in bed. Zayn peeked his head from inside the bathroom when he heard Liam’s tone, toothbrush dangling from his mouth.

“Slow down, Tommo, c’mon. Take a breath. That’s it. Okay, what—?”

“ _Harry’s been taken_ ,” Louis started again, slower but no less panicky. “Get—Niall, grab Zayn, just—get here _now._ ”

The sun is hinting at rising over New York’s frozen skyline, dark buildings looming over the van as they drive down another endless midtown avenue. Louis has his faced buried in Liam’s shoulder, lower half in Niall’s lap and Zayn’s arm around him.

They’re crowding him in, giving him no alternative but to accept comfort. Without it, Louis seems liable to pull his fingers off or chew his lip apart, twitchy and wild-eyed.

How he can have the energy to still be so worked up is beyond them. Harry went missing nearly twelve hours ago, and he’s been a jittering mess every second since, intermittently crying and breathing deeply and twitching, twitching, twitching.

Paul is driving them around, at a loss now that a more specialized (read: heavily armed) security detail has been brought in to find Harry. Hours ago, the tracking app Paul made them all get in their phones last year pinged him as being south of the city, closer to New Jersey than New York. Louis about had a fit when the signal disappeared again.

The van is silent. There aren’t any words, all of them spun so tight with worry, and even if there were, they wouldn’t help the reality of it.

Nothing will help until Harry is back with his brothers, Niall thinks. It’s a dire situation, though, and names—John Lennon, fucking _Selena_ —keep flashing through his head unbidden.

There is one thing that sets Harry apart, though.

Zayn says it first.

“Can they…if they even want to…um. If they try to hurt Harry,” he finally manages. Louis whines, low and dreadful, into the junction of Liam’s neck and shoulder while the boy frowns gently at Zayn. Niall pets a hand over his thigh comfortingly. “Can they? I mean, he’s already—”

“I don’t know,” Louis answers, rapid as gunfire with his eyes squeezed shut. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t—”

“They’re not going to get the chance,” Liam says pointedly, raising an eyebrow at Zayn. “They probably just want a ransom, there’s no way they’d—”

“People are angry,” Louis says, words muffled, “that he’s…with me. Fans, they’re mad that he’s with a bloke. I’ve read tweets, there’s—”

“They won’t hurt him for that,” Niall says quickly. He sounds painfully uncertain.

Louis huffs a breath, hair mussed when he raises his head from Liam’s shoulder to glare at Niall. It’s a wobbly stare, more pitiful than piercing. “Why _wouldn’t_ they? There’s—Westboro Baptist Church or whatever the fuck _,_ there’s crazy fans who think he’s their boyfriend, he could—why _wouldn’t_ they hurt him?”

And he’s back to crying, voice cracking, surprising even himself with his capacity to feel panic and fear in such a raw way, hours in. _It’s a nightmare,_ Louis decides. _I’m in a nightmare, and any second Harry will wake me up by accidentally kneeing me in the back, the plonker._

The boys bunch tighter around him, nearly crushing him with comfort.

The sun is well and truly up, the boys well and _truly_ exhausted (Niall keeps wiping at his eyes blankly, Liam tracing soothing shapes on Louis’ arm as Zayn presses his thumb rhythmically into his shoulder), when Paul’s mobile rings.

“They’ve found him,” he says moments later, eyes puffy from sleep deprivation. “He’s freaked out, but he’s alright.” Gentler, “Louis, he’s alright. We’ve got him back.”

Louis pushes them all off as much as they’ll allow and straightens up, eyes brightening through his fatigue. “Harry’s okay?” he rasps.

“He’s safe, Lou,” Zayn murmurs, reassuring the other boy as much as himself. He feels like his muscles have all unclenched simultaneously, wants to melt into the leather of the bench seat. Harry’s alright. Harry’s scared because Harry was _kidnapped,_ good god, but Harry’s okay. He can see his relief reflected in the eyes of the others.

They’re restless the rest of the drive and fly through the back entrance and halls of the new hotel, jittery in the elevator ride to one of the higher floors, of which the suite occupies a solid half.

 “Harry—?”

He’s got a blanket around his shoulders, for all the good it’ll do him, still dressed in his clothes from the day before—a Stones tee and dark skinnies. His hands are clasped as he stares ahead blankly, pale eyes glassy, lips parted slightly in inattention.

He looks offline. He looks traumatized.

Louis reaches him first, because of course he does. He’s on Harry in a second, scooping him into his arms and wrapping his legs around him from the side. It looks a bit as if he’s attempting to make Harry a part of him, keep him safe and contained, which. Probably not too far off the mark.

Niall bounds behind the couch, wrapping his arms around the two while Liam and Zayn squeeze onto the space left on Harry’s right side.

It probably looks downright incestuous to the burly security men, but they’ve always been a touchy lot, and anyone who doesn’t get that can stuff it.

For a stuttering moment, it seems Harry won’t react, so still and quiet is he as they coddle him, pressing kisses to his hair and vague caresses to any part of him they can reach.

Then he draws a low, clean breath in.

“Hi,” Harry says, relief warming his tone. “Hi, lads.”

“Baby, are you okay? Did they—”

“Are you hurt? How did—”

“Let him _breathe,_ for Chris—”

“—doesn’t _need_ to breathe, _Haz,_ are you _okay?_ ”

“’M okay,” Harry mumbles. “Fuck. That was—” as one, they pull back to examine his face, Niall craning his neck oddly to manage it from behind the couch. Harry swallows, Adam’ s apple bobbing, as he takes in their concern through light eyes. “I was scared,” he admits in a small voice.

Louis is already shaking his head. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, love, _no one’s_ gonna force you.”

The others make noises of agreement, but Harry brushes it off. “No, I. I do.” He takes in a trembling breath to calm himself a bit, physically flat-lined by on edge nonetheless. “They. They made me tell them.”

It’s silent for a moment among them, the gruff drone of Paul being debriefed by the security team in the other room the only noise in the posh suite.

“Tell them what,” Liam asks in the flat way they all recognize as meaning he already knows. “Harry. Tell them what.”

Harry’s dark lips tremble. “I’m so _sorry_ ,” he says thickly, eyes closing. “Fuck, I tried not to—”

“No one’s blaming you,” Zayn rushes to say. “They _kidnapped_ you, H, no one’s blaming you. ”

“She told me they’d start sending pieces to you if I didn’t—”

“ _What,_ ” Louis says. “No, I’m sorry, keep—pieces of what?” It hits him, horror dawning on his face. “Of _you?_ ”

Harry nods miserably, words stumbling. “I didn’t want—they recorded it.”

Niall’s face darkens. “Did they—they didn’t…force themselves on you, did they? I know you said you’re okay, but—”

“ _No,_ they didn’t—God, no,” Harry says abnormally quickly. “Fuck, they. They recorded me explaining what happened.”

Liam, being Liam, bites the bullet. “In Charlotte?”

“Yeah.” Harry chews on his bottom lip. “I’m so sorry.”

“Wait, so they know? They know you’re dead,” Louis clarifies quietly.

“Yeah,” Harry repeats. “Yeah, they know I’m dead.”

The energy diffuses from the tangle of limbs that comprises their band. It’s huge news, it’s probably life-altering for their ragtag group, but it’s also a final blow in a day of many. None of them are up for it.

“We’ll get through it,” Niall says, Irish as ever in his wary determination. “Not sure how, but—we will.”

They all nod their agreement, eyes glassy with fatigue. Even Harry seems tired, leaning heavily into Louis and shutting his eyes against the day.

The five of them manage a stumbling walk into the suite’s bedroom without fully disengaging from each other.

“I’m sorry,” Harry repeats.

“Don’t be,” Louis answers. “Harry, we’re just glad you’re safe.”

“’S true,” says Zayn.

Liam and Niall make soft noises of agreement, all five of the boys falling in a puppy pile on the plush, enormous bed.

Paul finds them all curled into each other with Harry at the center, skin nearly glowing from their combined warmth.

 

✦✦✦

 

_**Styles:** My name is Harry Edward Styles. I was born in Redditch on February 1 st, 1994, and…_  
_**Vosler, off-camera:** Say it._  
_**Styles:** Please._  
_**Vosler:** You know the deal, say it._  
_**Styles:** Oh God. [inhale] …and I died on June 27 th of 2012 in Charlotte, North Carolina._  
_**Vosler:** Good. Continue. _  
_**Styles:** I suffered a…massive head trauma on stage that killed me instantly. I…_  
_**Vosler:** Keep going._  
_**Styles:** I woke up in an ambulance minutes later. My vital signs had disappeared, but I was still able to function normally. I’ve been doing so for half a year now, and show…_  
_**Vosler:** …No signs of deterior—_  
_**Styles:** —no  signs of deterioration…God…and have been able to hide my condition._  
_**Vosler:** Good._

**_[end video]_ **

**_Styles, off-camera:_** _Please. Let me go._

**_[end audio]_ **

_—Harry Styles death confession, recorded by Angela Vosler on behalf of True Direction, held as evidence. Property of NYPD._

 

The solution, when they find it, is nearly elegant in its simplicity.

Naturally, Modest outright rejects it.

“Look, the gay thing—we lucked out, boys. There’s no way we could have known three years ago opinion was going to shift so much in so little time. But this is something without _precedent._ ” Phil leans back, rubbing at his temples in a way that was clearly stolen from too many viewings of crime procedurals.  “You remember what that word means, right?”

“We’ll _be_ the precedent,” Louis snaps. It’s not his fight, not the way coming out with Harry was, but his hackles are up anyway. He shuffles back on the bed the five of them are still on, careful to keep the laptop’s camera centered. In the corner of the screen, he sees them all crowded together, looking rumpled by sleep and very, very young. Louis’ mother once told him that a group of kittens is called a clowder. It’s a good word for them.

“Not that simple, Louis,” says Magee sharply from halfway around the world. He only has half his face in the video frame, the old fuck. He’d made a big point of being involved in this call, rumbling on about the walk to Phil’s office and the expense the whole New Years Eve abduction had placed on them. “You’ve a contract to uphold, and it’s our decision how that’s best done.”

Zayn speaks, sleepy but endlessly shrewd. His head is resting on Harry’s shoulder while the boy stares at the screen, brow furrowed. “Vosler said—her e-mail said there’s another copy, right? That’s what Paul said. We can’t—there’s no _hiding_ it, alright.”

Magee leans back, arms folded. His gaze is patronizing, likely already tuning out Zayn’s contribution to the discussion. Liam kind of wants to hop a flight back home just to level the man with a solid punch. Phil raises an eyebrow in interest at Zayn’s words, though, so that’s something.

Zayn continues, flushing a bit with the attention. “So we can…it’s like you say: we can control the message or we can be controlled by it.”

Magee is silent as he considers. Then, “That’s a point.”

“It is,” Phil agrees, so quietly it could be meant for his side of the line only.

They all sit, tense and waiting, though it’s still only a fraction of earlier hours before they knew if the baby of their makeshift little family was going to make it back to them in one piece. In the center of the cluster of his boys, Harry stares dully into the camera, willing their handlers to agree with Zayn. The boys had gone over it, before the Skype call started. If Harry’s to be robbed of agency at every turn—embarrassing questions from interviewers and misquotes in every publication and _kidnapping_ —he’d like to take control of what he can.

“We’ll contact you directly, Styles,” Magee says, leaning forward. He fumbles with the keyboard for a moment before saying in an undertone, “How do I make it—”

Phil shuffles forward, they hands colliding at the bottom of the screen. “Let me—”

The call ends.

 

 

Word is sent within a matter of hours, when the boys are all bundled up and headed back to the UK.

“They want me to speak out about it,” Harry says, legs splayed on the couch with his hands on the mobile in the his lap. He reads over the e-mail again. “Want me to come out. But like, as undead this time.”

Liam whistles lowly.

“And you’re okay with that?” Niall asks, cracking his knuckles where he reclines in the bucket seat, 3DS resting on knee.

“Yeah,” Harry says, realizing the truth of it. For the most part, after the initial shock of the abduction had worn off ( _cold eyes cold gun dark room bright light_ ) and they’d began to figure out a plan, he’d assumed beating his captor to the punch—a woman named Angela Vosler, a twenty-seven year old and captured right on the heels of his rescue—was something he _had_ to do. For the boys, and the band, and their company.

Now, he can appreciate that it’s something he _wants._

“Yeah, like really yeah?” Zayn asks, concern all over his face.

“Yeah,”  Louis answers on Harry’s behalf. His gaze still sears when he meets Harry’s eyes. “You mean it, don’t you?”

“I really do,” Harry says, pairing it with a small shrug. “Kind of sick of the secrets. They figured it out, didn’t they? Angela and her friends. And they’re just the _radicals,_ like—if they suspected, so do others. I’m sick of people being able—allowed, _encouraged,_ even—to speculate about things we’re not even meant to comment on. It’s driving me mad.”

The only sound is the muffled hum of the engines as the jet streaks through the air. It’s not surprising when Harry is insightful, anymore, dopey grin and calm demeanor having long since stopped hiding his intensely observant nature from the boys, but  it still occasionally catches them off guard.

“I,” Niall begins, head shaking a little in awe, “am so glad you’re still around, H.”

Harry smiles brightly. “Cheers, Nialler.”

The video Modest makes him record is less than three minutes and, unlike his last harrowing experience on camera, Harry feels no sudden swell of panic. There’s a moment, in the beginning, where he takes just a second too long to say the word “died,” but the rest tumbles out level and clear. He keeps his eyes on the camera as well as he can, even when he talks about what’s changed and what’s different.

“As you may be able to tell,” he begins, focusing on controlling his tone while he fights his nerves, “I still have brain activity. As much as ever, anyway,” he corrects. His tiny smile is self-deprecating. “Not like there was a ton going on up there to begin with.”

He finishes strong, a request for understanding and simple thank you his sign-off.

It goes live at midnight. It’s a little bit like coming out again.

And as with the last time he came out, Harry’s on the phone with his mother when it happens.

“Don’t read the comments, _never_ read the comments!” Anne reminds him. She’s tinny through the mobile that the boys all hunch around on the floor. It rests in the glow of the laptop screen which has Harry’s statement on the official One Direction YouTube page loaded, Liam’s finger on the refresh button in near-constant motion as they watch the view count climb and climb and climb.

On another screen, the tweet linking to the video is experiencing much the same rise to infamy. As is the copy on Instagram.

There’s no way to miss it.

The verdict of the Styles-Vosler trial  will have Angela and three other members of _True Direction,_ a group dedicated to exposing the Harry Styles undead conspiracy, sentenced to five years in jail on kidnapping charges and fined half a million dollars each. It will go on to be the subject du jour of late night program hosts, radio jockeys, major news outlets, several unauthorized biographies, and even a Lifetime original movie.

In May, the _Take Me Home_ tour will sell out in a matter of seconds.

 

✦✦✦

 

_The Tomlinson household is a noisy place._

_It’s a rich and rewarding type of noise, comprised of life’s best things: the shrieked laughter of delighted children, the enthusiastic bark of a dog with its tail wagging manically, the lively conversation between loving partners as they prepare brunch._

_Really, it’s Harry who does most of the preparation. Now 34, the iconic popstar seems as at home whirling around his kitchen as he does singing to sold-out arenas or intimate crowds. He’s  effortless and relaxed in a forest green sweater and dark jeans—all a bit less body-hugging than the style he made so iconic in his twenties—as he serves us our food on the family’s terrace. The patio is done in white flagstone with ivy climbing the neat, dark brick of Harry and Louis’ federal-style home. An extensive, white-washed trellis hangs above us, offering fragrant hits of new flowers._

_“It’s just a simple benny,” Harry says to me with a dimpled smile. Naturally, his Eggs Benedict with classic asparagus tips as a side is one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. (Bonus: I can now check ‘Have Harry Styles cook for me’ off my bucket list.)_

_The man is as charming as ever, and it’s clear Louis, 36, agrees. Self-labeled ‘loudmouth,’ Louis is chirpy and bright all throughout the meal, but for all his involvement, it’s obvious that his eyes and ears are only for his husband of just over a decade. Though likely an unintentional fixation, it’s nevertheless evident from the moment we sit and the pair immediately twines their feet under the table, sharing a warm, humorous look as Louis claims the Benedict “The worst thing [I’ve] ever tasted.” He punctuates his words with another enthusiastic bite._

_When I remark on this sweet and surprising fondness he shows in his signature, backhanded style, the usually unflappable Louis surprises me further by blushing._

_“It’s all well and good now,” Harry remarks, sipping at his mimosa (with freshly squeezed orange juice in, naturally) and smirking, “but I’m telling you: one of these days he’s gonna notice my weird nose, and then the whole house of cards will come crashing down.”_

_“Harold, the kids are around,” Louis scolds. Their dog Octopus (named by Holly, their eldest daughter at age six)perks up momentarily at the noise before settling her great Basset head back by Louis’ feet. “Don’t joke like that, it’d break their hearts.” A dainty bite. “And your nose is perfect, idiot.”_

_“They kids are upstairs with my sister, she’s in town for the weekend,” Harry tells me in an undertone. He shoots his husband a pointed look. Louis rolls his eyes without malice, looking out on the unusually sunny morning and the spacious garden the home possesses. Without regard for my presence, Harry lifts Louis’ hand and kisses his knuckles lightly._

_In doing so, the famous rope and anchor tattoos the pair have inked into their wrists line up precisely. I am reminded of all that has been overcome by the two men before me to get them here, on a beautiful estate with a beautiful family, and find myself momentarily choked up, right there over my benny._

_—Stacie Albright, " My Morning with the Tomlinsons." Vanity Fair, June 2025. Excerpt._

 

“Aaaand you’re officially twenty-one,” Harry says, eyes  on the mobile screen’s clock even as he leans over to press a kiss to Louis’ head. “How’s it feel?”

“Mmmrph,” Louis supplies. It’s a noble effort; his face is mashed into the fat pillows and talking is a challenge. That’s probably more on the pitcher of margaritas, though.

Harry lets himself stare, eyes on the tender skin at the dip of Louis’ spine right above his worn-in joggers, the only clothing he was willing to spill into after stumbling home from the party in his honor. “Sounds about right,” Harry allows. He flattens a palm and uses it to leverage Louis onto his back, forklift-style. “Breathe, Boo.”

“E’rything’s dizzy.” Louis covers his eyes to shield them from the lamp’s dim light. There’s a bitch of a hangover waiting for him on the other side of this dizzy spell, he knows. He whines pitifully through closed lips. “And twenty-one is _old._ ”

Harry no longer possesses the ability to get drunk, but he’d smoked a bit of herb with Zayn at Louis’ party earlier (an experience he’s found _much_ enhanced by being dead). It does nothing to take the sting out of the words.

It’s not intentional, is the thing. Louis has fought against every birthday kicking and screaming for as long as they’ve known each other, only to be inevitably thwarted by, well, _time,_ and then go on to moan for a few days about how _old_ he suddenly feels. It’s very predictable, and still quite adorable years in, all told.

But also, it makes Harry feel like shit.

Harry is still an extant human being. He overthinks and gets caught in lies and buys peonies for the den at the market during their downtime. He fucks his gorgeous boyfriend and sings to millions and buys the skinniest, most expensive trousers they make.

He’s living, he’s just not _alive._ And 364 days of the year, that’s just fine.

Until he remembers he’s not getting older. Until he’s reminded.

“’S a privilege,” he murmurs, quietly enough that Louis could miss it.

He doesn’t. He never does. Sometimes Harry wonders if he’s imagining it when it seems him and Louis read each other so plainly, across the stage or across the world.

Louis is scruffy and a bit flushed from suffocating on pillows when he sits up laboriously to face Harry. “That was shit of me,” he mumbles, gazing off at the carpet to avoid Harry’s eye. “I’m sorry, you’re right. It _is_ a privilege.”

The remorse is so plain on his face Harry feels immediately that _he_ should be apologizing for putting it there. “It’s not like I don’t have birthdays,” he tries, but it’s weak.

“Mmm, not the same, is it,” Louis clucks, voice airy as he drunkenly shakes his head. He winds his arms around Harry, dragging him to his chest. The warmth of his body is incredible. It always is. Harry closes his eyes and breathes it in. He never gets cold, really, but he’s not felt properly warm in a very long time. “The hair thing helps, yeah?” Louis asks.

The hair thing he’s referring to is one of the many oddities Harry possesses in his altered state. It makes sense, Liam had said, tone indicating just how little anything made sense. Hair keeps growing after you die. Harry’s was no exception.

Harry has taken to examining it nearly daily, has thought about wearing headscarves around the house to cage in the curls that are only now starting to fall past his ears. He thinks it might be a Look for him, the headscarf thing. He’ll have to talk to Caroline about it.

“I can cut it and not worry about it never growing back,” Harry muses into the warmth of Louis’ bare shoulder. “So that’s nice. To have something that changes.”

“Yeah,” Louis says. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Haz. That was so insensitive. I’m such a tosser.”

“You’re alright, birthday boy,” Harry murmurs. “Sleep, yeah? Gonna make you breakfast in bed tomorrow.”

“Don’t deserve it,” Louis whines as they snuggle into each after Harry covers them with the duvet. Louis tucks his head above Harry’s, cradling him to his chest. “Was _so_ fucking insensitive. Don’t deserve _anything,_ ” he grumbles.

Harry huffs an amused chuckle. “Deserve the world.” A kiss to Louis’ sternum. “Idiot.”

But Harry still thinks about it, days and weeks after. He’s nineteen soon, right, and then twenty after that, but he’s never going to _look_ it. He supposes it’s a dream come true, for some: he’ll look eighteen forever.

But he never wanted to.

Months later, on the roof of their hotel with the boys, Harry posits a question. “What if,” he begins, hearing the din of the fans below where Liam and Niall are riling them up from the balcony’s edge,  “I don’t like being eternally youthful?”

“If this is you worrying they’ll always card you at pubs—” Louis begins to quip.

“It’s not.” Harry’s mouth screws into a scowl. “Louis. You know it’s not.”

Louis’ hair is freshly cut, shorter than he’s had it in years, and gelled into a piecey, feather-light look that Harry loves pulling apart after shows, mussing with his fingers until it’s even wilder. They’re in the south of the United States again, and the mercifully balmy wind whips the styled tips around a bit as Louis assesses his boyfriend’s mouth, with its downward tilt, and his tentative, owlish eyes.

“You get that we still get to _do_ all of the big stuff, yeah?” Louis enquires gently. “I mean, we still get to _fuck._ How does that make sense, right? It doesn’t. But we still get to. If we can overcome _that_ leap in scientific logic, everything else is…it’s cake, Hazza, honestly.”

“Louis,” Harry says as quietly as he can and still be heard over the fans below, going apeshit as Liam boosts himself up on the balcony rail. “I don’t even come anymore.”

The older boy barks a short laugh. “Oh yeah? Not sure you can fake how you—”

“I come _dry,_ ” Harry amends. “You knew what I meant.”

He looks honestly ruffled against the night. Louis stops dancing around it. “S’not like you were gonna knock me up or something anyway, babe,” he says, teasing only gently.

“I always thought—” Harry clears his throat. His lashes flutter closed, eyelids nearly translucent for how pale they are.  “Um. Surrogacy?”

Louis’ stomach blushes. It’s a real, actual thing, according to Liam, and Louis now recognizes it as the squirmy feeling he gets whenever he and Harry talk about marriage and babies and the future, too hot and bubbly to be anything but a rush of blood brought on by the greatest thing he’s ever thought to hope for.

“Can definitely understand not wanting any of my pixie genes in your offspring,” Louis says, hesitant to joke about it but unsure how else to respond. Two years ago, he isn’t sure he could have fully comprehended surrogacy, let alone marriage and a family as big as his own.

It’s new. It’s all still so new.

“I wanna have your babies,” Harry says reflexively. He brings one knee up to his chest, the other dangling off the high bench. “Little blue-eyed pixie menaces or no. Whatever you want.”

“But,” Louis prompts. Harry’s chews his lip, considering as he stares into the night.

Zayn looks over from where he’s smoking out of the crowd’s line of sight, smiles softly when he cottons onto the conversation’s content. He eyes the back of Liam’s head for a minute, the strength of his arms and the solid width of his shoulders, the loud boom of his delighted laugh and stream-of-consciousness concern for a girl who’s tripped in the crowd. He narrows his eyes in consideration, thoughts swirling around an undefined point in the future.

“I thought we’d have…like, a mix.” Harry says finally, his cheeks rounding like they do when he’s fighting an embarrassed flush, even though none emerges and never will. “Or like. The option to have one.”

“Baby,” Louis says softly, tipping over the delicate edge he constantly rests on between overwhelmed by love for Harry and functional adult male.

“And like—Lou, they’re gonna get older. _You’re_ gonna get older.”

Louis’ nose wrinkles. “Don’t remind me.”

“See, why do you do that? Stop acting like it’s such a chore to get to grow up,” Harry implores. “You’re not _stuck._ You’re gonna, gonna grow into this—beautiful _man,_ and I’m so thrilled for that, Louis, honestly I am,” he maintains, hand coming to wrap around Louis’ wrist, “I’m so fucking proud of you. But. I thought we’d get to grow up—grow _old,_ actually—together.”

Louis feels leaden with a disastrous, poignant sort of adoration. “I don’t mind if you don’t,” he says honestly. “I know it’s not—it’s not ideal, but look. If the other choice was you _dying_ on that stage? Right in front of me? And the real kind of dying, where I cry over your body while they put it underground.”

“Stop trying to guilt me,” Harry snaps.

Louis scoffs a laugh, disbelieving. “I’m _not._ ”

“Lou, there’s a whole pack of girls with carrot suits,” Niall calls over. “Come look, it’s—ow, fuck you—” he slaps at Liam’s hands where they’re pinching at his sides to amuse the masses “—it’s fuckin’ funny.”

“There’s always carrot suits, Niall,” Louis responds, eyes never leaving Harry. He’s being evasive and fidgety, it’s maddening. Louis just wants to help.

“A whole _pack,_ ” Niall insists while Liam rubs large, sensual circles through his shirt.

“Li, come help me with something?” Zayn says, grinding out his cigarette.

Liam abandons his post as fan entertainer without question, waving happily to the crowd before catching Zayn around the waist.

“Jealous cunt,” Niall says fondly. “Lads, come say hi to Nashville. The carroty girls are building a pyramid.”

“In a minute,” Louis and Harry call as one. It’s a familiar moment, and it’s enough to coax Harry into meeting Louis’ gaze again.

“All I meant,” Louis begins, “is that I’m gonna love you forever. I think we’ve—like, we’ve proven that, yeah?” he traces a gentle finger over one of Harry’s swallows. The growing collection of ink on Harry’s cool skin: something else that he thinks gives Harry a sense of control and forward momentum, especially accompanied by the collection of doodles on Louis’ own skin. They’re matching them up, boats to birds, each other’s marks all over each other. “I’m glad you’re around for me to love. _Whatever_ the conditions of that,” he tacks on when Harry opens his mouth to argue.

“What about when you’re sixty and I’m still jailbait?” Harry asks. His tone is despondent. “What about when our eldest turns forty and looks like my aunt instead of my daughter?”

“You want a girl, then?” Louis asks absently. He twines their fingers, stroking along the dip from Harry’s index to thumb.

“I think for the first, yeah. But obviously later—” Harry huffs out a sweet exhalation that holds soft frustration. “That’s not really my point.”

Louis doesn’t answer, just waits.

“Is it even right to bring children into a household where…where one of their dads can’t even, like…”

“Ejaculate?” Louis’ treacherous brain supplies.

Harry laughs, startled. “Don’t be _sick,_ Louis. Jesus. We’re discussing our babies.”

“Aaaand I heard both ejaculate and babies,” Niall says. “You know what, I’ll show you a picture of the carrots later.” He whirls from the crowd with a final bow and heads for the roof access door. “You two are terrible. Goodnight.”

“Night,” they chorus.

They’re quiet for a minute, breathing in the moment alone. A sweet smell filters through the air, a little grassy and wild despite the city’s prevalent asphalt-and-diesel aroma.

“What could you do before that you can’t do now that would affect you…being there, for your kids?” Louis asks quietly. “Being a good dad?”

Harry groans. “How are you being so… _balanced_ about this?”

“How are you not?” Louis counters.

“I _died,_ Lou,” Harry whinges. “It was kind of a big deal.”

“I fucking _know,_ ” Louis says, matching his boyfriend pitch for pitch. It’s maybe a little not-nice, but the conversation is honestly ridiculous.

A car honks, long and loud, stories below. The evening sky’s washed out blue has gone over in purply indigo, tinged orange by the glow of the city.

“I don’t want to be on this planet when you aren’t,” Harry admits. “I don’t want to ‘live’” he raises his long fingers in quote marks, shakes them in emphasis, “without you.” His eyes search Louis’ for understanding.

“Oh,” Louis breathes out. “Oh, Curly—that’s not. We’ve got so much time before—”

“Before…?” Harry cuts in. “You get older every day. Sorry, not like—obviously you don’t _look_ older, _yet,_ but.  I don’t. And our kids will get older, every day. I won’t. You’ll _die._ ” His voice goes raw on the last. “And I can’t. I can’t—leave with you.”

Louis thinks about it, cradling one of Harry’s hands in both of his. He rubs soothingly over the flesh of his palm. “I’m not leaving,” he tries.

“You don’t get another option,” Harry counters. “No one does.”

“Someone did,” Louis says pointedly.

“And it’s a fucking curse,” Harry says. “I’m fucking stuck watching the love of my life, our children, our _grandchildren_ all grow old and die while I just...” he trails off, gaze transfixed on a point in the future. He shakes his head despairingly.

“Jesus bloody fuck,” Louis swears, “is _that_ how you feel? How long have you been thinking about this?”

Harry looks miserable when he replies, “Since your birthday, I guess. But like…since the beginning.”

Louis folds him into his arms, careful to keep them balanced on the bench as Harry shifts his center of gravity to fall forward into the embrace. “That’s not. I don’t know what or how we’ll change it, but—Harry, that’s _not_ going to happen.”

“How can you know,” Harry mumbles into his hoodie.

“Because why the fuck else would you have sat back up in that ambulance?” Louis grips Harry by the meat of his shoulders and pushes him back so they can stare each other down. “Like actually, what other reason?”

“Wasn’t aware there had to be one,” Harry says. He’s gnawing on his bottom lip again, unhappy and over-thinking everything, but he’s holding Louis’ gaze nonetheless.

Louis shakes his head. “Makes _less_ sense that it’d be random, really.”

“Well,” Harry drawls out, slow as molasses. “I won’t lie, love, I don’t really know where to go with that.”

Louis recognizes it for the minor victory it is. He drives his point home. “All I’m asking is that you consider that…maybe the worst case scenario _won’t_ happen, yeah? We’re fated, Haz.” He says it softly, nearly losing it to a gust of wind. It’s too dear a belief for normal volume, too tender a truth to be spoken.

Though his pale, haunting eyes remain bleak, seeing things decades in the future that may or may not happen, Harry feels a bloom of warmth spread through him at the words. He can feel his expression go over all soft and loving in a way the boys never fail to tease him for when they spot it in interview footage.

“Okay,” Harry says simply.

Louis smiles slowly. Radiantly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, leaning forward to peck his lips once, twice, three times. “I trust you, you know? And. You’re right, we’re.” He smiles, dimple deep enough that Louis wants to poke it, so he does. “We’re sort of…meant to be. Destined, like.”

“’Course we are, we’re Larry Stylinson,” Louis says, leveraging a stretch of his arms into a stretch of his legs that pushes his body into a standing position. He yawns hugely, suddenly feeling the day of interviews and rehearsal. “Bed, beautiful?”

“Can we just like…snog for a while?” Harry asks shyly, smile glowing and eyelashes fanning across his fair skin when he looks up at Louis through them. Louis’ breath catches. A familiar sensation, where Harry’s concerned.

“ _Just_ snog?” Louis checks. “Why Harold, I would be honored to repeatedly smush my lips to your lips.”

Harry cackles. “Can there even be tongue?” he asks as he stands. He extends his hand to Louis, who snatches it up like a greedy toddler.

“There can absolutely be tongue,” Louis assures him, leading him back into the warm halls of their hotel. “I’ll even grope you through your pants, if you. Y’know. Ask nicely.”

“’M always nice,” Harry says. “Aren’t I?”

“You’re always nice,” Louis assures.

The tempo of their kisses follows an arch from sweet and chaste to desperate and needy to sweet again. It’s always been a favorite of theirs—the first full day in bed they ever spent together, right after X-Factor, was them simply kissing and touching so, so tentatively, new to each other’s bodies and the pulse-ratcheting electricity that ran between them, made their spines tingle, made their hands shake.

It’s still there, under the surface, and Louis hums high in his throat, pleased to have his lips tingling, as he kisses down the back of Harry’s neck while he falls asleep some time later.

“Don’t go anywhere I can’t follow, Lou,” Harry murmurs, sounding drugged. He doesn't sleep, but he'll do something akin to dozing and lay with Louis. It gives a sense of normalcy for Harry; Louis isn't sure he could handle laying in their bed alone each night anyway.

“Nowhere,” Louis promises. “Nowhere you can’t follow.” And it’s sort of an absurd promise in a life that has thus far offered no guarantees, but Louis will make it happen.

He will. For Harry, he will.

 

✦✦✦

 

 

“Jesus, look at the retweets,” Louis mutters.

Harry’s fucking with his hair, trying to remember what Lou had taught him about volume at the roots. It’s in a bit of an awkward phase, beginning to grow out in earnest but not nearly long enough to do much with except quiff or tuck under a beanie.

“How many?” he asks absently, frowning down at the blow-dryer.

“237,533 on mine since I tweeted,” Louis rattles off, “About the same on yours.” He giggles. “Some of these replies are vile.”

“Don’t read the comments,” Harry mutters automatically. He strides out of their bathroom, looking himself over in the mirror before flopping back onto the bed next to Louis.  “Never read the comments.”

“’Louis, I want you to rub my clit until I squirt all over your—’ _ohoho my god,_ ” Louis laughs, nose scrunched, “that’s awful. Nice to know everyone seems to think I have a massive dick, I suppose.” He cards his hand through Harry’s hair when the boy pillows his head on his chest. “Ha! ’Harry you and Louis should Eiffel tower my tight holes please.’ But spelled like p-l-z. So polite.”

“Eugh,” Harry remarks, face twisted in disgust. “How old is she, even? Does she even know what that _is?_ Kids today. Etcetera.”

“’S a he. And…” Louis scans their bio. “Nineteen.”

Harry _hmphs,_ slightly mollified. After a beat, “He fit?”

“ _Harry._ ”

They’re walking from their house to the shops, stopped every now and then by a gaggle of fans (they’ve already been informed that cameras have been called to pap the club they’re appearing at briefly tonight, though none are scheduled for the student bar they plan to hit after).

They’ve just disentangled from a group hug with three giggly public schoolers when Harry brings it up.

“So, the Jamaica trip.”

Louis’ head swivels to him, swinging their joined hands up to his mouth to press a kiss to the back of Harry’s. “What about it?”

The original plan had been to go for Harry’s birthday, maybe bring the lads and just…relax, really, smoke up and swim in the sun while London kept itself foggy and grey. It had all been set to go, until they got the call three days before their flight letting them know they’d be expected to do a couples interview in preparation for Valentine’s Day.

“The one in Paris was kind of a giant hit, I guess,” Louis had explained. Harry shrugged, unbothered, and rebooked their flight for later in the month.

Then Harry had started doing some research.

“I was looking into Jamaican cultural events and stuff…” Harry starts, trailing off as he lays gentle fingers to the petals of a rose in a display outside the grocery. Louis grabs the fat bundle of flowers while Harry moves ahead, through the glass doors. “And they have this, like, museum on different cults and spiritualist movements and stuff in Kingston.”

“Yeah?” Louis asks absentmindedly, guiding them toward the deli.

Harry nods. “Yeah. There’s this, I think, African-based belief there. Belief system. Hi, little love!” he chirps at a baby in a pram. The mother smiles automatically at his tone before taking in his death-pale skin and light eyes and signature curls. To her credit, she only gapes slightly as they pass. “Kumina, I think they call it. It’s also seen in Haiti. It’s very tribal?”

“That’s interesting,” Louis encourages. They enter the queue for the deli counter. Louis pushes onto his tip-toes to see if the mozzarella-olive mix they’re after is among the overflowing dishes on offer.

A soft, fond look from the undead boy at Louis’ attempts at paying attention. “It is,” he agrees. “They believe that there’s sky and earth deities, right, and ancestral spirits.”

“Mmm,” says Louis. “We’ll have to visit, sounds really cool. We can give Haiti a visit too, if you’d like? Bit different accommodations, though. We’d have to ask after the hotel situation. Unless you’d want to stay on the yacht?”

“Not sure,” Harry muses. “But like. That’s not all.”

“Ah.” A second deli worker scurries out from a doorway and they’re able to jettison to the front of the queue. Louis places their order by rote. The man behind the counter nods easily, scooping heaping spoonfuls of balsamic-tinted mozzarella and Kalamata’s into a plastic container.

Harry shuffles a bit, foot to foot, before bringing his lips to Louis’ ear. He talks quietly, voice buzzing lowly in the shell.“They call the spirits _zombi,_ ” he says.

Stiffening, Louis darts a look around. It hasn’t been explicit, but they’ve both been looking. For what, exactly, has never been clear. A treatment, a cure, an _explanation_ , even. 

 _Nowhere you can’t follow,_ Louis had promised. He has it saved to a folder for tattoo ideas, messing about with different typefaces and stylistic elements with Zayn every now and then.

Harry’s voice is deliberate and low, intense in its conviction. “It’s a being without a soul, kept as a slave through sorcery. It’s alive, but not really. Not like…not fully.” He swallows. Louis can hear the click of his throat. “Like me.”

“You’ve a soul, Haz,” Louis assures him absently. All told, Louis has said time and time again he’s not convinced he believes in the soul. But it’s _Harry,_ and if anyone has ever upset his sense of rationality, it’s his boyfriend.

A thought occurs. “Why would that happen to you, even?”

“Dunno that one,” Harry admits, pulling back a bit to take the container from the man and thank him.

Louis breathes out, less steady than moments before. “Well. Nice research, babe. This sounds like an actual lead.”

“A _lead?_ ” Harry teases. He’s preening with the compliment, though. “Are we detectives now?”

“Not unless the mystery is why I put up with you,” Louis returns, adjusting his hold on the bouquet. “We’re out of milk. Also, dairy-related question: how much of that Greek yogurt do we have left?”

 

✦✦✦

 

_Both the zombi of the body and the zombi of the soul include many subtypes classified either according to their origin or to the mode of zombification. A great many properties of zombis have been reported in the literature[….]Zombi descriptions are therefore quite contradictory. In addition, some reports in the literature are very superficial and do not mention whether or not magic is involved in zombification, or which part of the soul is stolen._

_A spirit zombi is immortal and does not age, generally keeping human form and the aspect of its dead owner. It is never ill (even if it was frequently during its lifetime), does not eat, and is able to move[…]All are at home between three o'clock and three-thirty in the morning._

_The good news is that zombis can make love. In the case of a dead couple, both partners can make love to each other. If only one partner dies, his or her zombi can return to the surviving spouse._

_—Hans W. Ackermann & Jeanine Gauthier, "The Ways and Nature of the Zombi." American Folklore Society (1991). Excerpt. _

Their suite in Kingston overlooks a florid boulevard from one side, the beach from another, and the mountains that the city nestles against from the last.

It’s through the mountains they drive in a Jeep that Harry immediately likens to the ones in _Jurassic Park._ The museum is another ten minutes up a steep set of crumbling stone steps. Louis takes a moment halfway up to coax a vivid green lizard off the path, letting it run over his hands while Harry snaps pictures. Louis sets it loose on Alberto, who gently tucks it into his shirt’s pocket without comment. Harry gets a picture of that, too.

“Has your eyes,” he deadpans, skin enviably sweat-free while the rest of them swelter.

“Has your smile,” Alberto counters. Harry nods solemn agreement. He maybe imagines the minute, answering bob of the reptile’s head.

The museum is quiet, as museums tend to be, hardly populated with anyone but the girl behind the front desk and a family armed with backpacks and sunburns. They all turn as the boys and their muscle enter, eyes going wide over the course of a minute.

After a round of photos and have a nice day’s, as well as a word from their security to wait to post pictures until tomorrow, they’re finally able to speak to the front desk girl alone. She looks young, thick hair braided off her face and wrapped around the crown like a wreath, and she’s smiling in a way that communicates knowledge as well as good humor. It’s a good trait for someone in her line of work.

“We’re looking for your exhibit on Kumina?” Harry asks, smile winning.

The look on the girl’s face—Horatia, reads her silver name tag in simple script—is uncomfortably knowing. All she does is nod, though, still with the hint of a smile, and usher them down a hall lined with photos blown up to cover nearly the whole wall that depict antique-looking rituals and stately modern religious ceremonies alike.

“If there’s anything else I can help you with, let me know,” Horatia says. Louis nods and thanks her on their behalf, because Harry is already intent on the first column of text on the room’s far wall. Beside it is a recent-looking photo of women in colorful dresses, yellow and black and orange and blue, fanned out mid-twirl while others look on.

Harry’s laser-focused on his task, mouthing the occasional word. His brow furrows each time it’s not the info he wants. Louis mimics him, starting from the opposite end of the room.

It’s ridiculous that it takes them so long to see it, really. It’s part of the small room’s central display, photos and trinkets and large, sans serif text.

“H,” Louis prompts quietly. Harry whips his head around, hauling his lanky frame over to the display.

It’s with quiet amazement that they read of _zombi,_ both of spirit and flesh, who walk the earth in an altered state, parallel to that of humanity but not quite the same.

“This is it,” Harry says finally. “The symptoms, the staring off for hours _—_ fuck, I thought I just had permanent jetlag.”

“And your weird salt thing,” Louis says. He’s quiet, a little bewildered. “The headaches.”

Harry stopped getting sick after the accident, which made sense from a physiological standpoint. There were no functioning systems to target, and no immunity to fight back even if there were. It was something of a relief to their handlers, who threw themselves into a tizzy whenever Harry would get bad head colds or wicked fevers. (He was just someone people liked to dote on, Louis supposed.)

Instead, he’d stare into space for disconcertingly long periods of time, finally roused by splitting headaches and a craving for salt. He’s swallow down tablespoons of the stuff, wincing around the taste even as he shoveled more into his mouth.

It helped. Every time, it helped.

“So I guess the remaining question,” Louis says after a moment, “is how the _fuck_ you got zombified, Jamaican-style.”

“Not sure.” Harry runs a hand through his hair, ruffling the back. “But can you watch your worried tone?”

Louis barely has time to process his strange words, the lightly trembling note of his voice. Comprehension dawns; he braces himself.

“Because _Jamaican_ me crazy.”

Louis groans. Horatia can be heard laughing down the hall.

“I fucking hate you, you zombified fuck,” Louis swears, swinging a sharp fist ineffectually at Harry’s chest. Harry catches it, uses it to haul his boyfriend closer until their noses are nearly brushing when he ducks his head. He wraps his arms around Louis.

“You love me,” Harry comments mildly.

Louis huffs a breath to blow his unstyled fringe out of his eyes. His hair’s starting to rival Harry’s in length. They should get the others to join their long hair pact when they get home.

“ _Jamaican me crazy,_ ” Louis mutters wonderingly. “You’re insane.”

“Just a zombie, apparently,” Harry corrects. “ _Zombi._ Whatever. Hey Horatia?” he calls down the hallway.

She’s back in an instant, brows raised high in obvious amusement. Her teeth shine bright against her lip when she tries to bite back a smile. “How can I help you?”

“This…uh…this bit on _zombi,_ ” Harry says, fumbling with the terminology as his eyes scan the display over the top of Louis’ head, “it says sorcerers enchant them to be that way.”

“Yes.” Horatia nods.

“What can you tell me about sorcery of that…nature?” It’s weird, saying the word _sorcery_ aloud and sincerely, using it in a serious conversation, but Harry’s done stranger. He’s met the Queen, after all.

Horatia twists her full mouth into a thoughtful scowl, hazel eyes making a wide arch toward the ceiling as she thinks. She looks about seventeen, but it’s clear she’s completely knowledgeable of the topic when she opens her mouth. “It’s not something you’ll hear a lot about in the city,” she begins, accent lilting. “But my grandfather practices.”

“Does he? That’s so cool,” Harry says, honestly intrigued.  

She smiles, flush deepening the tone of her skin. “It is. He’s very serious about it.”

Louis wriggles out of Harry embrace to examine the small, rather grotesque picture of a gaunt man with only the whites of his eyes visible, jaw unnaturally distended over uneven teeth. It sits just below the description of _zombi_ of the body. Truly creepy.

“Do you think that…sorry, but can I ask your opinion?” Louis asks.

Horatia nods at once. “Of course, sir.”

“Oh. Just Louis is fine.”

“Alright.”

“Do you think that could be what…what Harry is?” he asks quietly. It’s hard, even after nearly two years of… _this,_ the pallor and the lack of pulse, the sleepless, pale eyes and unexplainable quirks, the interview questions that remain invasive as all hell, to talk about candidly.

Mostly, he’s just Harry. Just Louis’ Harry.

Horatia considers. “I would say so,” she says finally. She sounds sure.

Louis motions to the distressing photo. “But this man—”

“Is fully _zombi,_ ” she explains quickly. “He’s had his soul stolen and used for something else. Tending crops, running a shop. Tutoring.”

“ _Tutoring?_ ” Harry splutters. “Someone’s using my soul for their _A-levels_?”

“No,” Horatia says, patient, “because you’re not fully _zombi_. You still have free will, and you still possess your original body, yes?”

“Um.” Harry takes stock. He turns to Louis. Louis nods, thinking about Harry’s cold, sightless form in the ambulance, the moment tinted nightmarish hues in his mind’s eye. “Yeah. Original body and…all that.”

“My guess is that they didn’t complete the ritual properly,” Horatia says. “It’s not complicated, but it takes focus. It requires experience, more than anything. Years.”

Something is itching in Louis’ brain, and a quick look at Harry’s face tells him he’s unsettled as well.

“So they’d be younger, then,” Harry prompts, and there it is.

Horatia exhales a long breath through her teeth. “I hate to say, but. Um. Fans…”

“They get a little intense,” Louis says in a small, airy voice. “Oh my god. A _fan_ did this?”

“Hold on.” Harry’s brow is scrunched up to its maximum scrunchability as he works it through. He shakes his head, curls flopping about his face. “They couldn’t have known that a light was going to fall, could they? That’s the thing that actually _killed_ me.”

“Unless they did,” Louis supplies. “I mean I know it was ruled an accident in the lawsuit, but—you’re _Harry Styles,_ you know?” He swallows hard and says ruefully, “Fans lose their minds over you, babe.”

Harry closes his eyes, remembers grey eyes and a hot spotlight and fear, fear, fear.

“Is it possible?” Louis asks the room in general, but he’s watching Harry.

A wounded nod on Harry’s part as Horatia says, “It’s possible. It’s likely.”

“Well…” Louis’ eyes catch on the face of the man in the photo. He thinks about Horatia’s remark on free will, thinks about the depraved comments on Harry’s tweets from people across the world, and feels his stomach twist. “Fuck.” His gaze twitches to Horatia and he winces. “Sorry if we’re like…shattering your image of us, or anything.”

Horatia smirks. “If I’m honest? You’re fun in person. Sorry about the circumstances, though.”

“It’s no trouble, love,” Louis says wearily. It is, though. This whole situation is troublesome in the extreme.

A fan killed Harry. Harry was _murdered._ And somehow that isn’t even the worst part. There’s someone who wanted something even more twisted.

Harry gives the fans his heart, every day. Why the fuck did one of them need his soul?

“Two questions,” Harry says. His voice is heavy the way it gets when he’s forced to stare down the ugliest parts of the human condition. “First: is there any way to find out who?”

“My grandfather may have a way to find them?” Horatia offers. “We’d have to go to him, though, he’s…very old.”

“That’s no problem,” Louis says immediately. “Fuck, if we can find the piece of—” Harry inhales loudly through his teeth. Louis’ eyes move to Horatia and the hallway behind her. Remembers this is a public space, with at least one family of four with a twelve-year-old daughter down the hall. Nothing draws attention faster than a popstar behaving badly, and _then_ they’d be wondering what all the whispering was about to start with. He runs a hand down his face, eyelids fluttering shut. “If we can find whoever did this,” he amends, “we should.”

“Alright,” Horatia says. Harry’s hand, even cooler than normal from the air conditioning in the windowless room, clasps Louis’.

“Second question,” says Harry, finger dragging down a column of text, “what it says…here, about being able to get the soul back.” His eyes are bright, nearly silver, when he meets Horatia’s. “Is that true?”

“It’s all true,” Horatia says, face carefully still as she suppresses an eye roll. “But I can’t make a guarantee on its success. Especially since the ritual that changed you was done improperly.”

Harry bites at his dark bottom lip. “But that’s a chance, isn’t it?” he asks. “I could…” he swivels to Louis by his side, smile tentative but warm. “We could still do it all the way we said we would,” he murmurs, for Louis’ ears only. If Horatia or Alberto (still awaiting patiently in the mouth of the hallway) hear, they do an excellent job pretending not to. Lord knows Al’s had enough practice, the poor bloke.

“We’re gonna have all that anyway,” Louis says immediately and no less quietly. “All of it, no matter the outcome. Harry.” He brings a warm hand to Harry’s face where he’s turned back to the display, reading over the words that hold the key to everything. “No matter what, okay?”

Harry nods, but it’s a vague and distracted gesture. There’s unease for Louis in realizing that Harry’s already latched all his hope to the success of this, some old man somewhere in Jamaica who might have the answers. Which might lead them to who did this, and, in turn, lead them to reversing it. _Maybe._

It’s a lot of uncertainty, and it’s nothing less than Harry’s life in the balance.

“Y’know, this time last week I was more concerned about an earache than anything,” Louis remarks. Then, louder, “Alright, everyone good to go? Sounds like we have work ahead.”

Horatia scurries off to let her boss know she’s leaving early under pressing circumstances while Alberto excuses himself to take a piss before they leave. Harry takes the opportunity to pin Louis against the abandoned hallway’s wall and kiss him thoroughly.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

Louis makes a questioning face, lips pouted and eyebrows flattened. Harry makes a helpless sort of noise and presses another kiss to his lips. And another. And another.

“For _what,_ ” Louis finally articulates.

Harry kisses him once more on the forehead, noting the footsteps down the hall. “You’re always here for me, even when everything’s—batshit.”

“Not going anywhere, Styles,” Louis murmurs. “Nowhere you can’t follow, remember?”

For Harry, it’s enough. It’s more than enough to see this through.

Wherever it is they'll be left.

 

 

He supposes it was ignorant of him to assume, but Harry kind of expected Horatia’s grandfather to live somewhere more…mystical. As it is, he lives an hour north of Kingston down a paved (though sparsely populated) road, similar to any other rural neighborhood.

Horatia introduces them simply as friends; there’s a sense that the names _Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles of One Direction_ have no meaning to the wizened man who greets them. He smiles, teeth filled in with metal or missing altogether, and leads them into the stuffy living room of the small bungalow. Possessions that bring the word _artifact_ to mind line the walls and high shelves, bits of vertebrae and long, gourd-hewn pipes. There’s also random bits, what looks to be a TV Guide and a bag of corn crisps. A bull’s skull sits above a sliding glass door leading to a rickety-looking porch. It’s suspended out over a gulley that appears nearly misty in the late afternoon light.

“Harry has fallen under possession by…I guess you would call it unrefined sorcery,” explains Horatia. The old man’s bright eyes are still on them, assessing. They fall to Harry. “They didn’t make him truly _zombi._ He wants to be whole again.”

A maudlin way to put it, Harry thinks, but not untrue.

The old man plays with a stack of gaudy rings on his finger as he thinks. “How long ago did this happen?” he asks.

“June 27th, two years ago,” Harry says immediately. “When I—I was eighteen.”

“He died immediately,” Horatia supplies. “They didn’t put him into a trance.”

The man nods as if that makes sense, eyes still on Harry. “Who is they?”

Louis answers. “We don’t actually know.” A distinctly parrot-ish sound issues through the glass door to the porch. Still inspecting Harry like a car he’s yet to commit to buying,  Horatia’s grandfather moves around them to open the door, and the green beast does an odd little hop into the living room. Louis flinches at the unpleasant surprise.

Harry pulls Louis into his side a little more tightly than necessary, turning ever so slightly to angle himself between the parrot and the boy.

“That your bird?” Harry asks as he rubs Louis’ arm, tense up like the rest of him.

The man smiles his jack o’ lantern smile. “In some ways. He’ll help us.” He takes in the two of them, their intimate position, his expression unreadable. Harry bristles, hackles already raised in response to Louis’ fear. If this man starts coming after them for their relationship at this point, it’s probably not worth it to leave. Not when they’re so close to finding answers.

Harry would still do it, one hundred percent.

Instead, the man tells Louis in a soothing tone, “You can stop trembling, he’s completely harmless to the living.”

“Not really making your case, here,” Louis says, pulling out of Harry’s arms to face the man, hands on his hips and feet firmly planted between the very much non-living Harry and the odd, fat bird. Harry may or may not smile adoringly at the back of Louis' head. “Sorry, but why is he _here?_ ”

The parrot flaps its expansive wings once, twice, up onto the top of a ratty armchair, destroyed upholstery evidence that it's habitual. He squawks something between a word and a random noise, tilting his nearly reptilian head.

“Human eyes can’t see the soul, kid,” the man says impatiently. He scratches his bare calf with the sandal on the opposite foot, dragging the rubber of its sole over the wiry white hairs there. “Unless you’re a practitioner of Kumina sorcery and simply haven’t said?”

“I apologize,” Louis says through a tight jaw. “I just need to know if he’s going to hurt Harry.” Alberto is down in the car, having checked the place over already for any obvious danger, so Louis figures it’s down to him to defend his love against what he for some reason is automatically assuming is a macaw, even though something tells him that isn’t right.

“Hurt Harry? No,” Horatia’s grandfather says, shaking his head emphatically. His eyes catch on the bag of Frito’s on the battered side table. He reaches for it languorously, chewing the crisp slowly. Over top his chewing, he says, “Not the parts of him you care about.”

This does not make Louis feel better. “That doesn’t make me feel better,” he admits.

“Let me see if we can’t find the person who took your soul,” the man says, speaking over Louis’ head. Horatia takes a tiny step back. A foreboding motion.

“Harry, I notice you breathe as if you were living,” the man says, ignoring Louis’ useless comment. “You will need to stop for a moment.”

Harry stops without questioning it further, even as Louis looks like he might burst a blood vessel. It’s not that he doesn’t see the risks inherent in trusting a man who apparently claims power over the undead via magic bird. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate that he’s only _known_ this man all of half an hour. And the danger of all this happening in a house removed from civilization is readily apparent to him.

It’s just, things like personal safety no longer hold the same weight to him that they did two years ago.

Could be the already-dead thing. Could also just be growing up.

After checking to make sure Harry’s done as directed, the man turns to the parrot and makes a little clicking noise out of the side of his mouth. The bird dutifully flaps to the man’s lowered hand, then hops onto his shoulder, easy as anything.

Horatia doesn’t react, which is telling.

Louis feels goose bumps erupt on his skin when the parrot shuffles to face Harry and croaks, “ _Remember. Don’t breathe._ ”

Then it lunges.

 

✦✦✦

 

 ** _16: Discuss 1D Like An Adult._** Drowning Up, _the five-piece’s third movie made for the big screen, delves into the unseen tensions, heartbreaks and triumphs of the biggest band in the world. Travel with the boys everywhere from Japan to Antarctica (Zayn cuddling a penguin? We’re so there.) in this often shocking, always gripping documentary from director A.J. Schnack, known for his work on_ Kurt Cobain: About A Son. _Our advice: pre-order tickets now for the premier on the 27 th…this is sure to be a hot topic of conversation all summer._

_—Cosmopolitan Magazine, “50 Things to Do This Month”, June 2017_

“You’re okay,” Louis murmurs yet again. It started feeling stale in his mouth a while ago.

Harry’s crying again, but Louis suspects he’s beginning to tire himself out, however that works for people who can't feel tired. The sobs were wracking his frame earlier, and now he’s only sniffling dryly into Louis’ thigh where he lays with his head in his lap, legs spread out on the dark sofa.

They were close, is the worst part.

“Again,” Zayn says, rolling an unlit cigarette between his fingers incessantly where he sits in an armchair, “why couldn’t he just—”

“Clint didn’t…work the magic, or whatever,” Louis fumbled. He had the info, he _understood_ it, but it still struck him a little dumb with its absurdity. “And the woman who did, she. Like. _Straight_ disappeared. Empty flat, no…” he sighed. “No record of where she’s gone.”

Harry hiccups for the breath to speak. “If we’d started sooner—”

“Cut that out,” Zayn says immediately, firm. “Hazza, absolutely _no way_ could we have known. There’s probably nothing that would have changed the outcome, reasonably speaking.”

It doesn’t seem to mollify Harry any. He casts a look around their suite—the rolling papers on the coffee table, the program playing quietly on the TV—and closes his eyes. “I should’ve been looking,” he says dully. “Should’ve been searching since the beginning.”

“Mightn’t have mattered,” Louis reminds him.

“Could have,” Harry says darkly. Then he buries his face into the pillow, body completely still.

Zayn throws Louis a long-suffering look. “I’m gonna call Li. Then dinner?”

Louis nods distractedly, hands delicate in Harry’s hair.

The parrot had moved to bite Harry’s hand, quick and sharp. Louis’d felt liable to kick the creature straight back into the glass door when Harry muffled a cry of surprised pain, mindful of the breathing rule but obviously scared. Fortunate for the beast, it had drawn back almost immediately, beak wetted black.

After a (quite literally) breathless moment, it had occurred to the pair that the black was Harry’s stagnant blood, long since rendered useless.

“Ew,” Horatia whispered to herself.

Their panicked eyes had fallen to his hand, but the space where it throbbed with phantom pain remained unmarked, the tiny tattooed cross intact.

The parrot toddled back to her grandfather’s side, hopping to his shoulder in its practiced way before opening its beak to an unnatural width that made the hair on the back of Louis’ neck stand on end.

He really, really hated birds.

From its horrid beak issued a sound far more ominous than one would imagine to issue from such a small animal, echoing in the stifling space. Like a rasp of fingernails, or a tearing of cloth, magnified and slowed, low and terrible.

With a shudder, Louis realized it sounded not unlike Harry’s first attempts at singing after dying.

For all it unsettled Louis, Harry and Horatia, the girl’s grandfather seemed to glean something from the wretched noise. He gummed at his remaining teeth, popping another crisp into his mouth before offering one to the parrot. Its beak returned to what was more or less a normal orientation as it happily took the snack in its sharp maw, munching sedately.

“Fucking hell,” Louis muttered. Harry, not sure if he was yet allowed to breathe, remained silent.

“I’ll give you the address. She'll have your soul somewhere. A bottle, maybe.” The man shrugged as he walked through the doorway into a small kitchen. “Perhaps a mint tin, if she didn’t plan ahead. Haven’t we all been there.”

They thanked him and left quickly, the parrot following their progress to the door disinterestedly before giving a final, rattling squawk.

“Is he always like that?” Harry asked when they were loaded back into the Jeep. He studied the unmarked skin of his hand where the parrot had bitten, trying to gauge whether or not it had cut through his hand at all. It certainly _felt_ like it had, and a Herculean effort it had been to resist crying out.

Horatia waved to her grandfather out the window, speaking through her smile. “Yeah, he’s pretty chilled out.”

They’d set course for the address scribbled onto a Garfield memo pad, back into the heart of the city.

It had been fruitless. The address yielded nothing but an empty duplex with hanging flowers that looked half-dead. Alberto radiating tension at their backs, the three peeked through the windows and saw nothing but dusty wooden floors and blue walls boasting only rectangles of light as the sun began to set.

A dead end. Even after running the property records (and hadn’t _that_ felt very Special Ops; Louis was sad Liam missed it), it had been a dead end, with no forwarding info for the last tenant available beyond a name that turned up nothing at all.

They had both thanked Horatia for her time and apologized for wasting it (something she waved off with a smile and the shy admission that it was the coolest thing that’d happened to her possibly ever) before dropping her in a neighborhood with bright, sun-bleached houses. Zayn was waiting for them in the hotel after a day roaming the city or doing caricatures or whatever Zayn got up to on his own, so Louis got to watch Harry attempt to school his disappointment into easy indifference. A losing battle, as usual. Finally, he gave in to whatever despair he was cradling in his (partial) soul.

And now they’re here, Harry still as death on the couch in an act of petulant rebellion against his circumstances.

“I wanna leave,” he finally says. Louis looks down in surprise, having nearly forgotten Harry’s strop in favor of the TV. He strokes up and down the boy’s spine absently.

“Alright,” Louis agrees, easy as anything. From the next room, Zayn can be heard finishing up the hideously long ritual of goodbyes he and Liam indulge in when kept apart.

Harry looks up, pallid face creased from Louis' jeans, pouty. “Tonight, I mean.”

Louis’ lip quirks only a fraction, the lone tell of his irritation. “’S a little last-minute,” he notes. Being absurdly, ungodly rich was such an asset so much of the time, but there was no need to be twatty and demanding about it.

“I want to _leave,_ ” Harry groans again. “Fuck Jamaica. I mean,” he seems to catch himself, childish expression melting into something soft and thoughtful, remorse glittering lightly in his eyes for a moment, “I’m sure it’s lovely here—it _is—_ but I’m just. I wanna be somewhere familiar, Lou.”

Louis nods, neck prickling with aggravation. “First thing tomorrow, alright?” he clips out, turning back to the TV.

“ _Now,_ ” Harry says, outright whining. “We can charter a jet or—”

“Curly,” Louis cuts in, terse. “I get that you don’t sleep, but. Zayn’s tired. _I’m_ tired. In the morning, okay?”

Harry sits up, eyes narrowed in a way that Louis usually finds adorable but right now is only betraying his status as baby of the family. “Then sleep on the _plane,_ Louis, I can’t fucking stay here another goddamn second.”

And Louis is—just, over it. “Ooh, very dramatic,” he coos sardonically, shuffling away and displacing Harry’s head from his lap.

Scoffing in surprise, Harry blinks up at him before he rolls off the sofa, stalking away. “Why’re you being such a bitch about this?” he grumbles.

“Why’re _you?_ ” Louis retorts, eyebrows arching.

Zayn’s head appears in the doorway, eyes shifting between the two before he bites his lip and hits his speed dial. “Alright, Niall? What’s happening?” he says, melting back into the other room.

 “I’m leaving,” Harry says, stumbling through the room in the boots he never bothered to take off after their long day. He walks into the master bedroom he and Louis are staying in, grabbing for his possessions.

 _For fuck’s sake,_ Louis thinks. “See you on Wednesday.”

“Seriously?” Harry calls. “That’s all you have to say?”

Louis laughs caustically.“What am I meant to say, Harry,” he says, words precise and sarcastic.

Harry stalks back into the living room, duffle unzipped and bulging. “Sorry.”

“Apology accepted.”

“No, _you_ say sorry.”

“ _I_ didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Why are you so intent on being such a prick about this?” Harry gripes, large hand covering his face.

Louis narrows his eyes, beyond done. “I’m still not sure what part of ‘we’ll leave in the morning’ led to this level of whining.”

“It’s like you don’t even get why I’m upset,” Harry mutters. He’s scowling, but his large eyes are sincere in their misery, like a child who doesn’t quite understand why they have to get their shots but is nevertheless furious about the injustice. Distressed. Maybe a little betrayed.

Louis bites the inside of his cheek, eyes lidded with a feigned disinterest. When Harry hurts, of _course_ Louis hurts. Obviously.

But he’s not about—has never been about—this entitled popstar attitude. He really, really is not. “You’re being a baby about this,” he says, quietly and quite clearly.

Harry explodes. “About _what,_ exactly?” he shouts, words booming and drawn-out for emphasis. “Being _dead?_ My _murder?_ The life that’s been _stolen_ from me, I’m not handling it well, is _that_ what you’re saying? So sorry I’m not _just getting on with it_ , Louis fucking Tomlinson.”

“Oi,” calls a voice from the doorway. Zayn is standing there, mobile tucked away and arms crossed. He’s in full big brother mode, jaw set and tone no-nonsense.  “Knock it off, Harry, he said we’d leave tomorrow.”

“Fuck you two,” Harry bites out, voice rough. He hitches his duffel, still unzipped, over his shoulder. For the first time, Louis can only see the sullen teenager Harry’s body insists he still is.“Just—fuck you both.”

He swings the door open, likely reveling in the way it cracks against the wall as he stomps out.

“You are honestly such a goddamn child!” Louis calls after him. “Fucking hell,” he mutters, hand running down the side of his face.

Zayn pads from the doorway to Louis’ side, sitting heavily. “What was all that, then?” he asks, eyes on the suite’s door as it anti-climactically hisses and snicks shut.

“I don’t fucking know,” Louis moans, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes until it feels they may burst. He hopes they do. Won’t Harry feel awful _then._

“I mean I know his day didn’t work out how he’d hoped, but…” Zayn bites at his lip, turning to face Louis more fully. “Probably wasn’t going to, was it?”

“Dunno. Sort of hoped it might,” Louis admits. He pulls his hands away, blinks at the dark spots in his vision before sliding his eyes closed once more. He hates fighting with Harry. The fucker doesn’t play fair; Louis always ends up feeling like shit regardless of who’s right.

“Still, though.”

Louis sighs. “Yeah.” He tilts until he’s tucked into Zayn’s side. “I hate when he goes all ‘youngest child’ on our arses.”

Zayn hums his agreement, fumbling for a thick piece of cardstock on the coffee table. “Room service, then?”

“And like… _so_ much weed,” Louis requests. “You brought some, right?”

“We’re in Jamaica, man, think I forgot the weed?” Zayn kisses his forehead. “Fucking ridiculous.”

Which is how Zayn ends up dizzy and spaced-out in his room of the suite, doodling what started as a lion but is now some kind of robot lion hybrid (he’ll send Liam a picture of it in the morning), when his mobile starts buzzing on the table.

His brow crinkles when he sees the name.

“Y’alright?” he asks when he’s got it wedged between his ear and shoulder.

A rush of static that must be a sigh. “I’m sorry,” Harry says.

“Not me you should be apologizing to, babe,” Zayn answers. He begins adding quick, careless circles to the metal on the robot’s feline body to serve as chassis screws. “You on the plane?”

“I don’t know how to explain it to Lou,” Harry huffs, accompanied by another rush of static. “Yeah. Left around ten.”

“He’s mostly just confused and…put-out, like. You kind of just freaked out, y’know?”

“I did not _just—_ it’s been building for a while,” Harry strains. “This whole thing’s so...”

“Yeah.”

“It’s just _so._ So _shitty,_ so _random,_ and—”

“Permanent,” Zayn supplies, just barely inflecting it into a question.

Harry makes an odd, garbled noise. “Deh! That! It’s permanent, Zed. And like. I knew that, I’m not…stupid. I just. I guess I thought.”

“I’m sorry today didn’t work out.” Zayn puts his sketchpad down, holds the phone properly. “It fucking sucks.”

“It fucking sucks,” Harry agrees. Zayn can practically hear him playing with his lips, biting at them or worrying the flesh with his long fingers. “But I don’t…Louis thinks I’m such a _brat._ ”

“You were being kind of a brat, babe.”

“How do I tell him I’m just…” Harry’s voice sort of deflates. Zayn imagines him in an anonymous luxury jet, shoving himself into the corner of a suede couch, legs tucked up to his chest while he casts woebegone eyes at the dark ocean below. If he can even see anything. He might be able to see the first light of day by now, actually; Zayn’s always been shit with tracking the time differences they live by, more married to the idea of sleeping through them. “How do I say that I’m sorry for the fight, and for being shitty, but that. That it’s hard for me? This whole undead forever thing.”

“Just say it like that,” Zayn says, hoping it helps. “Tell him like you told me. Shit, Haz, you two hardly ever have a proper row, just like. Tell him you’re sorry.”

“Obviously,” Harry snarks.

“And don’t do _that,_ ” Zayn advises. “Twat.”

“Jesus, sorry,” Harry says. “Fuck. Okay.” A beat of silence. “Hey Zaaaayn?” he rumbles, voice syrupy even from thousands of miles away. “Will you bring the phone to Lou?”

Zayn’s mouth scrunches when he glowers. “Just call him.”

“He won’t answer if he sees it’s me.”

“’Course he’ll answer, you’re his…y’know. Gumdrop lovey-dove or whatever.”

“Please?” Harry pleads, sounding young and sort of sad and well, dammit.

“You,” Zayn grumbles, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, “are lucky I love you.”

“I know,” Harry hums. “Best big brother in the world.”

A thought occurs. “Wait.” Zayn stands outside Louis’ bedroom door. “I’ll only do it if you make that chicken schnitzel when we get back.”

“You’re already doing it,” Harry points out.

“No ‘m not,” he says, quietly twisting the doorknob. Louis is a dark lump in the center of the rumpled bed, pillow clutched to his chest.

“Of course I’ll make the chicken,” Harry concedes.

Zayn smiles. “Love you, Hazza.” He stalks toward the bed, reaching a hand out to lightly squeeze Louis’ bicep, right over the stag. He squeezes in a slow rhythm, Louis’ face pinching inward as he fights against Zayn’s pulling him to wakefulness.

“Love you too. Lou awake yet?” Harry asks over the top of Zayn working around a massive yawn. Christ, all their sleep schedules are fucked, probably irreparably. Except for Harry. Sleepless bastard.

A blue eye glitters up at Zayn in the darkness, Louis pouting into the pillow he’s holding as he begins to get his bearings. He sits up slowly, hair a fluffy wreck.

“ _What?_ ” he asks, high voice roughed up and pissed off.

“He’s up,” Zayn tells Harry in an undertone. Then, to Louis, “Phone for you.”

“What,” Louis grumps in a flat tone, eyeing the mobile. “Who is it?” His brow twitches, face relaxing as he realizes. “Haz?”

Zayn says nothing, just passes the phone over. He gives an odd, formal sort of wave as he steps out of the room, shuffling back to his own. He anticipates internet-sourced dick pics both copious and strange on the device in the morning.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing Louis hears when he presses the mobile to his ear.

“Okay,” Louis responds. He’s not trying to be a dick, it’s just _early._

Harry ignores it anyway. “I was upset and scared of, like, the future, and having no…control? Does that make sense?”

“You,” Louis says slowly, “have had a lot more time to prepare for this conversation than I have.” He rotates his neck slowly, willing the sleep out of his system. “Gimme a minute.”

“Alright.”

Louis sits up fully, resting against the headboard with his cuddle pillow in his lap. “Okay. Um,” he begins ineloquently, running his tongue over his sleep-dry lips. “I can understand being upset,” he tries.

“I know, and thanks for saying that, but it’s not an excuse. I’m sorry,” Harry repeats.

“Baby, you’re alright,” Louis assures. “I really, I _do_ get it. Mostly I was… _my_ anger, frustration I suppose, was more about your attitude.” He shuffles a bit so his tailbone isn’t pressed into the headboard. “We said we wouldn’t turn into demanding cunts if we made it big.”

“I know. Just. It’s wasn’t about entitlement, for me? I just wanted control over something. For, y’know, once. And I felt like you didn’t care that that’s what I needed. Didn’t get it. Lou, you _always_ get it.” He sounds thoughtful, sad, a little tired. He sounds like Harry and he sounds like home and Louis clenches the pillow tighter. “Makes when you don’t understand harder, ‘cause I’m not used to it.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t make you feel understood,” Louis says, meaning it. “I’m sorry for today, and—love, I’m so sorry you’re hurting.” His own throat is hurting, ragged from smoke and now tight from the words he’s pouring out.

“That’s okay,” Harry says automatically.

Louis shakes his head minutely. “No, it’s not. It’s not even allowed.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Oh, alright then.”  Louis, still a little high, thinks fancifully that he can practically see Harry’s warm smile  in the air, a Cheshire cat grin.

“Yeah,” Louis says softly, pointlessly. They’re silent for a moment, just breathing together. They’ve had entire phone calls like this, especially in the early days before they moved to London together, when Harry would call from Holmes Chapel and do nothing but snore into Louis’ ear all night. “It’s still gonna be okay. We couldn’t change anything, and I’m sorry, but like. _Nothing’s changed,_ y’know?” Louis swallows. “I’m still right here.”

“I know,” Harry says softly. “Thank you.”

“And I love you,” Louis adds.

“You too, love you too.” Harry hums out a sigh. “Sorry I was such a bitch.”

“Sorry I wasn’t keying in to why you were being such a bitch.”

Harry snorts. “You’re coming home tomorrow?”

“Yeah, love,” Louis murmurs, eyes falling shut of their own accord.

They fall asleep like that, Louis lulled by Harry’s breathing the same way he has been for years, miles and inches rendered the same. And nothing’s changed, but nothing’s changed, and it doesn’t make sense, but neither does anything in their lives.

Which is just fine.

 

✦✦✦

 

_Let’s be clear: the controversy of Styles and Tomlinson’s engagement doesn’t stem from the fact that they’re gay. The controversy is that Harry Styles, through some convoluted quirk of the natural world, remains legally dead. He does not and will not age physically past 18 years old, the age he was when an improperly-hanging spotlight fell on him._

_Tomlinson, now 23, does not have this problem. In a decade, he’ll be 33, and his husband (assuming the sensational love story the world has been following for the last five years is built to last) will still be physically 18. In twenty years, the difference will be 43 and 18. Then 53 and 18._

_And so on._

_Regardless of the legality of their coupling (which is still a solid gray in several areas—is it necrophilia? Is it legal yet admittedly uncomfortable cradle-robbing? It being two men, is it baseline amoral?), there’s a definite squick-factor that is already becoming apparent._

_Living their lives under the microscope of public attention since their teens, the two are no strangers to criticism on an international scale. One could even say they’ve handled the media’s many attempts to shake them with grace and aplomb. But all things have a breaking point, and it seems more and more likely that the now-happy couple will soon be forced to theirs._

_—Lydia Harringer, "People Are Outraged Over Harry and Louis' Engagement--and They Should Be”. The Huffington Post, 6 May 2015. Excerpt._

Niall doesn’t throw the iPad at the wall, but it’s a near thing.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters, “disgusting.” Foregoing chucking the tablet, he tosses it across the sofa instead. It bounces slightly before settling precariously on the edge of the cushion and sliding, sliding, thunking to the floor.

The others watch its progress dispassionately, except for Liam, who remains fixated on the shooter he’s playing.

“Those _exist?_ ” Niall clarifies. “Those like, exist, in the world. The world we _live_ in?”

“Creepy, right?” Louis says with a toothy grin. He’s laying on the floor with his head in Harry’s lap. Harry, in turn, has his feet propped more or less on Zayn’s shoulder blades. They’ve worked out a tension system that allows Zayn to lean back into his (fucking massive) feet as he would a reclined chair, thus allowing them both to maintain the position with little effort. Liam’s got his head back against the couch while Niall pulls gently at his messy, newly trimmed hair, twisting tufts of it into soft little spikes before smoothing it all back out with a broad palm.

Louis _was_ browsing the web on the iPad until he found a picture of what appears to be the nightmare child of a daddy long-leg and a centipede. Only worse.

“Thing’s fucking terrifying,” Zayn agrees, glancing at the abandoned iPad’s screen.

Harry frowns thoughtfully, mussing his fringe and pushing it out of his face. His hair’s shorter, too, cut back after growing clear past his shoulders over the last year. “Think we saw a thing about them back in Osaka. They’re called…fuck, what’s it.” He goes to grab his phone, only to find it’s stuck in his trouser pocket somewhere under Louis’s head. He gives up easily, fiddles with the thick ring on his left hand instead.

Louis notices, smiles faintly as he automatically mirrors the motion.

They don’t have a show tonight, and it’s glorious. On The Road Again has been odd, so much of the support staff leaving as Modest pulls out, so many new interview questions in each city to keep up with Harry and Louis announcing their engagement (something that has, in truth, been more or less a fact since the autumn of the year before), and a whole new batch of derisive fan signs at shows.

A personal favorite of the boys was one in Cape Town that read “Harry Styles: Gay, Dead, Jailbait.”

Harry thinks he may get it on a shirt.

“How is no one else worried about this?” Niall exclaims. “Satan bugs!” His frantic tone is belayed  by how carefully he’s sculpting Liam’s hair into a fauxhawk.  He doesn’t have the energy to get properly upset right now, but he’s trying, and that’s what matters.

“They’re gonna get you, Nialler,” Louis intones. “They’ve a taste for pasty Irishmen.” He frowns. "Irish pasty's. Irish _pasties,_ theeere we go." He looks up into Harry's eyes. " _That's_ the joke."

“Shut up,” Niall grumbles. “Zayn,” he prompts. The man turns his head indolently, huge eyes blinking softly. Undoubtedly, a hurricane is set off in Indonesia as a result of the hypnotic movement of his lashes.

“Whuh?” he grunts.

“Still up to go out tonight?” Niall asks. 

Harry stretches one long toe to tickle the very base of Zayn’s neck, right on his tattoo. Zayn slaps his leg in response, still looking at Niall.

“Totally, man,” he says, scratching his cheek. “Kinda stir-crazy in here.”

“Well you could’ve said,” Liam says, eyes still locked on the screen.

Zayn massages his temple, rolling his eyes behind closed lids. “I have been.”

“Care to join us?” Niall asks.

Liam shrugs. “Sure, why not. Wanna get something pub-y before we hit the States.”

“They havefried food in the States, _Liam,_ ” Louis mutters with childish disdain, back to playing with the iPad. Harry serenely presses a hand to Louis’ mouth. Louis bites it.

“’S not the same though, is it,” Liam returns, pausing his game. He shuffles around to face the rest of the band. “When do you wanna go? Now?”

“Fuck it, sure,” says Niall, standing and stretching as he eyes the clock. Zayn rises as well.

Louis, still pillowed in Harry’s lap, says loudly, “Alright well have fun lads! Thanks ever so much for the invite!”

“Some friends, right?” Harry says to him conspiratorially.

“Oh,” Niall says. “You _want_ to come?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the pair answer in unison. _Fucking creepy fucks,_ Niall thinks.

“You two’ve just been very…HarryandLouis lately,” Liam explains, wincing a bit over the words. There’s no good way to make it sound like anything other than a criticism. Which, it maybe sort of is.

“ _Larry Stylinson,_ ” Zayn adds in a simpering tone.

“Uhhh actually, Zayn, that would be Harry and Louis _Tomlinson,_ thank you,” Louis corrects, barely concealing the glowing grin the words bring to his face, “and also Liam, you have shit on the head of our entire friendship by not inviting us. On _my_ head. Dirty.” He clucks reproachfully. “Niall’s alright, though.”

“Cheers,” says Niall, striding to dig through his suitcase for what he’s lovingly christened his ‘pulling snapback’.

Liam tows Zayn by the waist toward the door. “Guess that makes you a shithead.”

“Get ready if you’re coming, we wait for no man!” Niall commands as he struggles into a restrictively tight pair of trousers, hopping to get them secured around his hips.

And so the group scatters to their various hotel rooms, preening and coifing and pretending very hard that they’re not.

Some hours later, in the sweat and noise of a club known for its DJ’s and exclusivity, Niall is stumbling into the bathroom to have a wee when he spots a familiar face in the mirror.

Besides his own, that is.

“Heya Hazza,” he greets easily, hands already on his fly.

The younger man mumbles something unintelligible while he continues to stare at himself in the mirror. Niall’s about to happily write it all off to drunkenness before he remembers Harry can’t get drunk, anymore.

“Sorry?” he tries.

Harry shrugs, and he’s definitely in a strop over something. But what he says is “Nothing”, which is hardly helpful.

“ _Off it,_ ” Niall scolds. “Come off it, you’re all _moody._ ”

“Am not,” Harry snaps. Niall raises his eyebrows pointedly. Realizes he’s really good at that particular action. Does it eight more times.

Harry’s face twitches with concern. “You okay?” he asks, watching Niall wiggle his eyebrows absurdly.

“That’s a question from me to you,” Niall counters. “A. A question you should ask yourself, rather.”

With a sigh, Harry seems to fold in on himself, hunching a bit and crossing his arms until he seems somehow compact in his expansive body. Not for the first time, Niall wonders what Harry would look like now, had he the chance to grow into his 21 years. He’d probably just keep getting taller and more chiseled, the bastard.

“Let’s just go back out,” Harry says. “Was just…taking a breather, anyway.”

“Good location for it,” Niall admits, looking around the space. It reeks of other people, this time of night, but it’s still large and posh and fairly clean.

“I guess,” says Harry.

Niall rolls his eyes so hard he nearly loses balance. Christ, but he is _pissed._

“Alright, we’re gonna go chat out back. How’s that sound? Sound nice?” Niall soothes, as if gentling a startled mare. He wraps a hand around Harry’s cool wrist, acutely aware of how very much he feels like a protective older sibling just then. The thought gives his shuffling Harry through the dense club a defensive air, hard glares at the girls and boys they pass who eye him up eagerly. They pass Liam on the way out, and Niall answers his concerned look and motions to Harry with a placating nod and hand signal of ‘OK’. He hopes Liam has the sense to tell Louis that Harry’s safe.

“So,” he prompts as soon as they’re in the alley behind the club. It’s empty, thankfully, save for the bins.

Harry’s looking down at his own feet, has been the entire walk outside, probably, and now he only shrugs, despondent. He’s slumps back against the wall of the club.

“Fuck’s sake,” Niall mutters to himself. He invades Harry’s space, gets right up in there, and then booms, “ _WHY, SO, SAD?_ ”

It’s probably not the best method, honestly, but Harry’s face at least changes from the listless frown he’s been wearing to a wince of annoyance. He pushes Niall back with one large hand in his face. His engagement ring pushes cold and heavy against Niall’s nose.

“’M just not in the mood, I guess,” Harry evades.

Niall is having none of it. He sucks in a deep breath around Harry’s fingers, ready to shout again.

“Al _right,_ Christ,” Harry mutters. “Just—hold on.” Niall shuts his mouth, stepping back a smidge. Harry sighs. “Y’know, these clubs aren’t nearly as fun when you’re not drunk,” Harry shares. “They’re just loud and full of strangers.”

“Is that why you’re upset?” Niall presses, though he doubts it.

“I’m not—” a warning look on Niall’s part, and Harry drops it. “No,” he answers instead.

“Why then?”

Harry inhales deeply once to calm himself, more a leftover from his living years than anything useful.“I’ve been reading people’s reactions online,” he admits.

Niall groans lowly. “ _Harry,_ ” he chastises. “ _Don’t read the comments,_ man. What does Anne always say? _Never_ read the comments!”

“I know,” Harry says quickly.

“Listen to your mother!”

“No, I know, just…god, I was so excited, you know? _Am_ so excited.” He huffs. “But people are tearing us apart.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Niall says immediately. “Like, they’re morons, Haz, first off, and also they’re _paid_ to spread shit, y’know? Cunts,” he adds for good measure.

“They’re not wrong, though,” Harry says in a small voice. Niall’s still swaying a bit from the drink—not that this conversation hasn’t sobered him _immensely_ —and nearly misses it. “Not this time.”

He tilts his head, waits for Harry to continue at his own methodical pace. The throbbing bass from the club changes pattern, now something moombahton.

“Lou’s gonna turn twenty-four,” Harry says finally, “and then twenty-five and then thirty-nine and then sixty-bloody-four. And I’d never, I’ll _never_ leave him,” he swears, fingers back on the ring and light eyes earnest where they bore into Niall’s, “but people are gonna _destroy_ him over it. Say he’s a cradle-robber, say he’s, like, worse than that. A pervert. Someone called him a fucking Satanist, because I’m a corpse.” He laughs, surprising and sorrowful. “And they’re _right._ I’m a _dead body._ I can’t. I can’t put him through that.”

If Harry hadn’t just said he never would, if half a decade of experiences didn’t back that statement completely, Niall would worry the man before him was fixing to run.

But he doesn’t worry. The sky is blue and the earth is round and Harry Styles belongs with Louis Tomlinson. They’re tied together forever, in love and legacy and soon, name.

Perhaps the strength of that bond is feeling more like a shackle than a tether to Harry. Perhaps, Niall thinks with a macabre jolt, Harry fears his anchor is finally dragging Louis down.

But all Niall says is, “He doesn’t care.” He’s reminded of being eighteen in a too-humid city, watching paramedics rush to and fro while he just stood there, Harry dead at his feet. Useless. “He still loves you. Always will.”

“Yeah, ‘cause he’s probably an angel,” Harry says, off-the-cuff, rolling his eyes. “But he’s wrong to.” His face crumples when the words hit the air. “God, I can’t put him through that.”

“Well.” Niall shuffles, at a loss. “You’re gonna.”

Harry makes a sort of terrible noise in his throat, eyes pained. “ _Niall,_ ” he whines.

“ _Harry,_ ” Niall mimics. Harry glowers, a cat scolded for clawing at the furniture. “Look,” Niall tries again. “If he’s yours forever, and you’re his forever, and that’s—like— _why_ does anything else matter? They put you through the meat grinder when you two came out, how’s this different?”

“You don’t have any idea,” Harry says, words precise and weighted “what it’s like to only half exist. I don’t _sleep,_ Niall. I can’t—can’t sleep or dream or _get drunk._ When we went to the zoo last month, that heat sensor by the snakes came up with me as just this…blue blob.”

Niall chews his lip, considering. He wraps his arms around himself.

Harry presses on. “People are _scared_ of me. And I’m fucking scared of them, you know that?” he exclaims. “I was kidnapped, and like. That was just a _mild_ kidnapping, that could go— _so_ much worse next time. Which! There probably will be! I receive so many threats I have security for Lou and I’s house, 365 days of the year. Both houses, actually.” His face is thunderous as he exhales loudly.

“And that’s not even going into the existential aspect!” he continues, volume increasing to nearly a shout, still enviably melodic despite that. “It feels like I only half-exist. And I have to watch, like, _you,_ and _Louis,_ and my sister and my _kids,_ and my _grandkids,_ and everyone I’ll ever love, _die_. While I’m stuck looking like fucking gay dead jailbait. _Forever._ ” He throws his hands out. “How the _fuck_ am I meant to cope with that?”

The seconds pass and Harry seems to settle a bit, back to leaning against the wall of the club. He’s breathing heavily into the stale air of the alley, eyes wild and hair wrecked from his hands all through it. He redoes the tuck of his shirt, a purple floral left unbuttoned so that the antennae of his butterfly peek out. He keeps staring at Niall like maybe he has an answer that could match that.

And. Actually?

“Listen, you pale, tragic fuck,” Niall starts. Harry’s eyes widen. “You sure have a lot of fucking complaints for a baby millionaire who’s part of the most successful band in the world. For someone who’s written with some of the best musicians of the last twenty years, and received the official blessing of dozens of others. Paul McCartney? _Ronnie goddamn Wood?_ You complain a _lot_ for someone who _shook the Queen’s hand,”_ Niall continues over Harry’s protests. “You’re twenty-fucking-one years old, and your _great-grandchildren_ are gonna be able to live comfortably off your success. You’re wearing shoes worth more than the car my family owned when I was small. And you have cars worth more than the house I grew up in. _Cars!_ Multiple!

“You’re one of the most beautiful people on the planet, living or dead or _both_ , and people in sixty years are gonna be looking at your style and trying to make it look half as good. People are gonna get your face tattooed on their bodies. _You_ are who people will criticize teenage girls for being ‘fake fans’ of in half a century.

“You’re this fucking magnetic, charming bastard, and smart as a whip, and no one’s _ever_ gonna properly learn to say no to you. You’re one of maybe four people in existence who could talk back to Simon goddamn Cowell and walk away in one piece, because _you’re just that good._ Millions, literally _millions_ of people across the planet are under your spell. You know what that gives you? The ability to change things in real, significant ways. Ever looked at one of those marriage equality maps? After you and Louis came out, approval for legalization jumped like 700% in all areas of the US and Europe. _And_ in Southeast Asia. Which is a big deal!

“And your mum? She’s so goddamn proud of you for that, which—surprise—but not every kid gets that sort of support in _anything,_ let alone their benevolent takeover of the world! She loves you like crazy! And your sister and your stepdad do too, they’re all crazy about you! They’ve loved you forever. And it shows Harry, I’ve gotta fucking tell you. Your home life is so stable it makes my _jaw_ ache. You grew up comfortable and _adored,_ and you’ve never known _anything_ but love.

“Which _fucking_ reminds me,” Niall barrels on, uninterested in Harry’s stabs at cutting in. He gives up after the second failed attempt anyway. “ _Louis,_ ” Niall continues. “You found the—no, you know what? You also made the four closest friends you’ll ever have, _completely_ loyal, _completely_ inseparable, at age sixteen. Most people have that happen over decades! You never had to handle the pressure of _any_ of this alone. We never would have fucking let you. _You’re fucking welcome._

“And yeah, Louis! You met the love of your life when you were a _child_ still. In a _toilet._ Your soul mate, your other half, and that’s not—fuck you, Harry, that’s not something everyone gets.” Niall feels his throat tighten. Pushes forward. “You get to sing to him at sold-out shows in front of thousands of adoring fans, and you get _paid_ for the honor. You two are what people talk about when they talk about love, okay? _You two._

“Yet you’re standing here, on your fourth sold-out tour with your four best friends, one of which is the love of your bleeding _life,_ on the—just, the most amazing journey anyone could ever hope to experience in life, wearing Yves Saint-cocksucking-Laurent, and you’re _complaining that you can’t take naps?_ That, what? Your amazing life will be _too long?_ That your daydream fucking existence comes with the disclaimer that you can’t _drink?_ Get _over_ it, you fucking idiot!”

Niall might be panting with the effort of the words, the actual and legitimate hollering he’s done to try and get his point across. He wipes at his forehead delicately as he breathes. Sweaty.

For his part, Harry is standing stock still, eyes massive and mouth hanging open. He looks a bit like a surprised fish, all told.

A surprised fish who is also an _idiot._

Niall wants to tack something on, keep talking to fill the stunned silence, but he’s out of words. He really gave everything he had on that one. Whether Harry absorbs it or not is his call.

“Going back inside,” Niall mutters. He needs hard liquor.

He stalks past Harry into the club, letting the door slam behind him.

 

✦✦✦

 

_Fall asleep, close your eyes_  
_See you on the other side_  
_You’re my ship and you’re my tide_  
_I’m drowning up with you_  
  
_Start again, wake anew_  
_Know I’ll never make you choose_  
_You’re my compass, you’re my guide_  
_I’m drowning up with you_

_—One Direction, “Drowning Up”, written and produced by Julian Bunetta, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson & Harry Tomlinson. 2016. Sony Records._

 

 

She’s near the end of the receiving line, so it takes the overwhelmed pair a moment to understand what she tacks on to her greeting.

“Congratulations,” Horatia starts, grin very much unchanged from the one Harry remembers. “I’m so happy for you two.” She’s a smidge taller now, pulling level with him in height, but she’s also filled out more. Her hair’s been (likely painstakingly) styled into smooth, lose curls that tickle his nose when Harry pulls her in for a hug.

“You’re here!” he crows, beaming. Their correspondence has been low-level but consistent since the Jamaica debacle. She sent them a graduation notice the year before. In return, they sent her a wedding invitation, along with an offer to pay for the exorbitant cost of travel and lodging.

 _I don’t usually pull this card, but it’s no burden,_ Harry had written. _We never really thanked you for your help, so. Start looking at dresses._

Harry’s glad they did it. He’s always been proud of his ability to connect with people truly and honestly, when their paths cross in a meaningful way, and the outcome of the situation doesn’t change the fact that Horatia’s crossed theirs.

Besides, his suit costs more than her tuition; he can shell out to have her come to a party.

“Thank you for the invitation,” she says, a little shy about it. “London is lovely. Your friends are nice.”

“You’re a friend, love,” Louis chirps. He casts a look down the line of cheery guests waiting to congratulate them, some more tipsy than others. Harry can hear Lux laughing from Lou’s arms.

Horatia smiles, but her gaze is suddenly—Harry fumbles for a descriptor—determined? She fixes him with a resolute look and leans in to hug him again.

Right next to his ear, she drawls in her thick accent, “I found a way to fix it. All of it. Find me later.”

The words reverberate in Harry’s skull, throw him off-balance. Louis must notice; his hand is on his elbow and his eyes are on Horatia, concerned.

Her smile is accompanied by an almost-curtsey, but her eyes are serious as she steps away to let the next guest in line have a word with the newlyweds.

Harry tries to pull himself back to the task at hand. _Task._ It’s not the right word at all; these are his favorite people on the planet here today, but he’s hopelessly distracted now. He hugs his great aunt and his LA friends, beams as they all pull Louis in with words like _finally_ and _so beautiful together._

They are, too. Harry’s hardly been able to take his eyes off his—Christ— _husband,_ the contrast of their hands when they clasp them juxtaposed with the matching bands around their fingers. Louis’ tan looks sinful with the suit that’s a bottomless black, same as Harry’s. His smooth face is open and warm as he chats with their friends, smile blinding.  He’s got his hair coiffed into the swirl he usually writes off as too high-maintenance, eyes glittering and catching the colors of the delicate blue flax surrounding the white poppy in his breast pocket. Its black center melds with the suit, deliberately coordinated and thought out over a course of months and _completely_ worth every second for the way the guests cooed at the beachside awning bedecked with similar blooms.

It’s the middle of June and they can smell the sea from the reception venue, overlooking the beach in a stately old hotel with wood siding painted an antiqued blue. Ed’s singing in the corner, a simple setup with two large amps and his guitar. Above him are strings of lights that will pop on once the sun starts to set over the ocean.

And it’s perfect. It’s been the most perfect day in Harry’s incredibly charmed life, full of happy tears and the fruition of what feels like a lifetime of promises.

But now there’s _this,_ and Harry’s ability to be swept up in the flow of the party—this wedding was honestly a monster to plan, and leaving all the day-of stuff to a planning company was genius—is probably gone for good.

“Fucking shit,” he murmurs into Louis’ ear as they move under the massive canvas tent. “Louis, _Lou,_ Horatia’s _figured it out._ ”

Louis exhales through a smile he aims at his twin sisters, waltzing dramatically to Ed’s singing while guests shuffle about for cocktail hour. “She told you that?” he asks quietly.

Harry nods, biting at his lip. “Where’d she go, anyway? Maybe we have time to—” he pushes out a frustrated breath.  “Fuck, we still have dinner and the _cake_ and the _toasts_ and the  _dance_ —”

“Harry,” Louis says, tone bordering reproachful. He’s been extraordinarily mellow and level-headed all day, save for the tears he didn’t bother suppressing during the vows, followed by the kiss set to the sound of thunderous applause. “We’ll get there, okay? We’ll talk to her as soon as we can, but for now I need you to relax and enjoy this. It’s our wedding, yeah? ” His face illuminates with the words, drawing Harry in.

Harry nods, eyelashes fluttering when Louis adjusts a wayward strand of his quiff. He does his best to ignore the panic throbbing in his chest. He’s been completely blindsided by a few words from a _uni student,_ essentially, and it’s maddening. He briefly wishes he’d never invited her, then immediately feels bad for the thought. Of course he’s glad she’s there. Of course he is.

Besides. Horatia has answers. Horatia has _solutions._

Or, she thinks she does. But before they can figure it out, one way or another, Louis and Harry have to get through the next couple of hours. Dammit.

Harry shakes his head minutely, rejecting those thoughts. He’s been trying for the last year or so (since an alleyway where Niall, screaming and blistering and bright, cracked open the desolate shell Harry’d crawled into over a course of years), to not be so terribly ungrateful. His life—contestable as the usage of that word may be—has been an amazing, _amazing_ gift. He’s standing here, over the moon to be married to the very best man he’s ever known, surrounded by everyone he cares about, and he’s _still_ finding something to complain about?

 _Fuck’s sake, Styles,_ he thinks. Then he catches the error. _For fuck’s sake, Tomlinson,_ he tries again. Quirks a private smile.

So he breathes it out, the fear and worry and biting memories of a hazy forest and a beady-eyed parrot and a flat left dusty and vacant with no answers to be had. He’s reeling, still, trying to think of what may have changed in the last two years that led Horatia to believe she’s found a solution, but he’s also.

He’s also just focusing on how incredible his afterlife is.

Louis swears he won’t cry during the speeches and then does quite a bit, face open and admiring as he takes in Liam and Niall and Zayn in turn. Harry promises he won’t smash cake into Louis’ face and then goes for it anyway, giggles as hints of champagne and crème de rose smatter Louis' lips and eyelashes while his mouth rounds to a comic ‘O’, face more cheekbones than anything when he’s surprised. Louis grabs his wrist, laughing as he returns the favor, and they’re clutching each other’s sticky hands and kissing while the photographer goes crazy, snapping away.

“Love you so much,” Louis murmurs into his mouth.

Harry’s grin feels like it could break his face. “Love you more.”

Louis pulls back from delicately nuzzling at Harry’s nose to scoff. “Marriage isn’t a competition, Harold.”

Harry throws his head back, laughs. He cheekily quotes Corinthians as they wipe their hands and faces of frosting.

“Love is patient,” he says, muffling the words into the folds of the heavy cloth napkin. “Love is kind.”

“Love has frosting in its hair, c’mere,” Louis says, fingers on the curls to the side of his face. “Such a mess.”

Harry’s eyes flutter closed as he glows under his husband’s careful attention. This will never get old, he expects.

But then, _he_ no longer expects to get old, either.

The opening E minor of their first dance song washes over him like waves breaking, drawing him from his swirling thoughts. He blindly finds Louis’ hand with his own as they move, striding around a cluster of tables to stand at the center of the dance floor.

It’s melancholy and sweet, thoughtful and poignant and, in Ed’s soft voice, so very hopeful.

 _“Hold you forever, it will be enough,_ ” Ed croons. Harry closes his eyes, lets himself sway into Louis as the shorter man leads. “ _Deep as the oceans, strong as my love.”_

 _“I’m drowning up,”_ Harry sings, low and rough with emotion in Louis’ ear. “ _I, I’m drowning up with you._ ”

The guitar fades from the swells it’s crescendoed to, petering out into a single-note melody that Ed plays gently, gently. There’s more cheering, a few catcalls as Harry dips Louis for a kiss that’s meant to be silly and showy but ends up unbearably sweet.

More people trickle to the dance floor in couples and trios, and it’s not long before he’s catching Horatia’s eye across the tent, jerking his chin to indicate the balcony left exposed to the breeze as the night comes in.

“Shall we?” he asks Louis, hands clasped.

“Yeah,” Louis says. He sounds distracted. Harry eyes him curiously.

Louis fidgets a bit under the intense gaze, only meeting Harry’s eye when he squeezes his hand.

“Just,” Louis starts. “If she’s wrong? If Horatia’s got nothing—”

“Lou, I know it might not—”

“I promise we’ll get through it,” Louis says quietly. “Vow, even. Okay? That’s all. If it’s nothing, and if you need to be disappointed, you can be. And I’ll be here for you this time.”

Harry can’t blush anymore, but he can feel a warmth diffusing his body at the words. “I don’t still hold that against you, y’know,” he assures.

“Well,” Louis says, shrugging. He quirks an eyebrow, gaze sliding briefly to Horatia. “I mean it.”

“I know you do,” Harry says. “Now. Ready?”

“Are _you?_ ” Louis challenges, but he leads them through the crowd anyway.

Hands brush over their arms as people wish them all the best things while they navigate the packed floor. Horatia is standing in a corner lit by twinkling lights, fingers absently pulling at her curls while she watches their progress.

“Alright,” Louis says, placing himself just a hair in front of Harry. “What’ve you got for us?” he asks her. Straight to business, then.

Horatia nods, as if she fully expected them to skip small talk. Harry briefly wonders what’s made her come over all self-possessed in the last couple years since they’d met her. He knows she’s studying Journalism in Kingston from their e-mails, but it occurs to him that—invite to posh, exclusive wedding aside—he doesn’t know all that much about the woman he’s once again placing his fate in the hands of.

It should bother him, but—well. It just doesn’t. He gave up on trying to control his extraordinary circumstances a long time ago. He’s accepted them. It’s made things loads easier.

“After your visit, I started researching more,” Horatia explains, gaze level on the pair. “My grandfather helped.”

“And how is the man?” Louis asks, eyes sincere.

Horatia’s mouth twists, just slightly. “He’s been better.”

Harry can feel Louis deflate at his side. “Sorry.”

Horatia shrugs, eyes distant, before continuing. “She didn’t take your soul with her when she left.”

Harry stiffens. “What?”

“The paper trail was dry, but the house…” Horatia shakes her head. “It wasn’t empty. There was a box. Just one.”

They’re silent for a moment, the boys digesting this tidbit. The DJ has taken over for the night, a cheer going up as Liam ascends the stage to do a set by his side. Harry sees him motioning for Zayn to join him, only to have the other man shake his head and stick his tongue out, unconsciously shying away from the stage.

“This is gonna sound random,” Louis begins, “but. What type of box, exactly? Like, like a shoebox, or…? Maybe a crate?”

Horatia smiles. “Actually, it’s relevant. It was an iron lockbox. They filled it with salt.”

“ _Salt?_ ” Harry asks, nose wrinkling.

“Salt,” Horatia confirms. “It was in a jar inside the box. Kept Snickers from being able to find it.”

“Snickers,” Louis prompts.

“The parrot?” Horatia reminds him. Louis scrunches his face in a way Harry knows means _Well how was I supposed to know,_ but he says nothing. Horatia continues. “Whoever took your soul wasn’t an expert, but they knew what to do to hide evidence of their…um…” she stumbles in her sure speech and eye contact for the first time all night, more like the girl they’d met, “…failure.”

“Good on them,” Harry says. He imagines, absurdly, a small gemstone in a tiny treasure chest, glowing in the duplex’s dusty light. A treasure in a video game. “So what does that mean for us?”

“It means,” Horatia says, and she’s reaching back onto the table by her place setting, “that I have a wedding gift for you.”

Harry swallows. Horatia extends slim fingers into a soft pink clutch, pulling out a box. The box is plain—looks almost like plywood, really—and very small, but she holds it carefully, the way Harry remembers cradling ornaments for the tree as a child for fear he’d break them.

“Whoa, can we—” Louis darts a look around, far from subtle. His face moves through eighteen different expressions as he takes in their surroundings, eyeing people up suspiciously and gazing at them fondly in turn. Harry is embarrassingly in love. “Elsewhere, maybe?”

“It might take some time,” Horatia explains. “It’s not complicated—shouldn’t be, I’ve been practicing—but. Are you sure you want to do this now?”

Harry feels a swell of warmth thinking of Horatia, a girl he’d met years ago for only a day, going to so much trouble over what, to him, is monumental, but to her is completely optional.

“If you’re feeling up to it,” he says slowly. “I’ve been ready for four years.” Something pings in his mind and he squints, thinking about it. “Almost exactly four years, actually. Louis?”

“Four years last week. And whatever you want,” Louis assures. “…Spouse.”

“Spouse,” Harry echoes, grin feeling massive.

Horatia looks between them, features going soft. “Near the water is best,” she decides.

Harry doesn’t get cold, but Louis and Horatia are shivering where they stand just past the waves’ reach. He takes off his jacket, fidgeting with his tie for a moment—his mother had very sweetly, very firmly told him to keep himself buttoned up through the bulk of the pictures, please—as he offers the jacket to Horatia, who smiles gratefully as she wraps it around herself, still clutching the box.

Harry eyes the box, feeling the first tremor of nerves over this situation.

“So,” Harry fumbles, “is this like…is it gonna hurt?”

Horatia opens her mouth but says nothing for a moment. “I don’t know,” she answers honestly. “Does it matter if it does?” She’s playing at the lid of the box, fingernails running along the seam as she waits to open it and start…whatever this is going to be.

Whatever this is going to change.

Harry balks. “No,” he says. “But. Um. Give me a moment, alright?”

He takes a literal step back, eyes on the ocean. It’s truly dark now, the lights from the party trickling down with snatches of music and laughter. The contrasting sound of the waves—always soothing, always a little magical in their ability to be all-encompassing—calm Harry, but not by much.

Because he’s not quite alive, and he’s not quite dead, and despite all odds, he’s comfortable with that. The face he looks at in the mirror every day is the same adolescent face he thought he’d grow into with age, complete with wrinkles and silvering hair about his temples and _stubble_ , even, maybe.

He thinks of Louis and the criticisms that are already floating his way, about their marriage and what it means as far as precedent for age gaps in Hollywood. Precedents for _necrophilia,_ even, though it’s always benched by daytime talk show hosts in lighter terms.

Harry thinks about the biological children he’s resigned himself to never having, babies with curls and dimples, thrilled shrieks in a sunlit kitchen while Louis tickles their toddler’s pudgy belly and calls them _Curly_ in the warmest tone.

He thinks of everything he’s been told he has to walk away from in his twenty-two years.

But—he’s accomplished so much in that same span of time. Harry’s proud of that, above all: the success of his career and the strength of his friendships, the steadfast bond he’s forged with the love of his life, the way he’s become a voice for so many around the world. But he’s especially proud of what he’s had taken—his _life_ , and with it, so many choices and experiences—only to come out the other side gracious and functional and _happy._ He’s living beyond what it means to be alive, and.

What does any of that mean, if he gives it back?

“Harry,” Louis says softly. Harry realizes he’s been staring sightlessly at the water. Looks back to Louis. His eyes are dark like the tide, understanding clear in the slant of his eyebrows as he reads Harry’s face.

“I don’t know,” Harry says simply. A seabird calls out across the waves.

“Oh,” Horatia says, obviously surprised. “It’s not going to hurt _that_ badly, promise.”

“That’s not—no,” Harry says quickly. “Just.” He bites his lip. He can’t explain it. He can’t explain how _okay_ he is, being dead. It sounds absurd, but.

“You’re alright,” Louis murmurs, hands pressed to the small of Harry’s back. He hauls him into his arms like he always does when Harry gets stuck like this, distressed and inarticulate. Harry breathes him in, familiar cologne and a hint of sweat and wedding cake.

He scrunches his eyes closed. _Him and Louis are married._

What right does he have to ask for anything else?

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into Louis’ ear.

Louis shakes his head slightly, already forgiving him, before he asks, “For what, baby.”

Harry disentangles, turning back to Horatia. She’s staring down at the box, fingers still poised on the lid, but jerks her head up when he speaks.

“I don’t think I can do it,” he says. “Don’t think—don’t think I want to.”

Horatia’s brow pinches, a bit like a storm cloud. Harry’s inexplicably reminded of his sister.”In Kingston, you were miserable,” she says. “You were stuck between two worlds. You hated being made _zombi._ ”

“But I’ve chosen to accept it,” he says, putting the words together slowly. “We’re all given shit deals sometimes, yeah? And we just play the hand we’re dealt. That’s what’s fair.”

“ _Fuck_ what’s fair, Haz,” Louis bursts out. Harry turns back to him, surprised. He looks—upset, really, kind of angry, there on the dark shore. He’s shivering slightly, and Harry takes a moment to realize it’s gotten colder as the wind picks up. “Don’t cheat yourself out of being fully human—fully _anything,_ just because it’s what’s _noble._ ”

“No, it’s not…” Harry pinches the bridge of his nose, struggling to explain. “I’m. Like. I’m _happy,_ you know? And a couple years ago, I’d’ve jumped on the opportunity to be…” It flashes through his head, crow’s feet and babies blinking huge green eyes and an end to all the public scorn they’ll never escape. “Be normal. But I.” He shrugs. “I don’t want it. I mean—I don’t _need_ it.”

Louis’ jaws flexes a bit. “Are you sure?” he says, level and deadly serious.

“Yes,” Harry says, relief coloring his tone. He hadn’t thought Louis would press, but he gets into this _mode,_ sometimes, where if he thinks something will benefit the younger man, he’ll push and push until Harry succumbs.

He’s usually right to do so. But this isn’t something Harry thinks he wants to be coerced into.

“Okay,” Louis says simply.

Horatia searches Harry’s face, expression pained and a little lost. “I’m not sure where this leaves us,” she admits.

“I don’t want it,” Harry says, sure. He’s looking at the box in her fingers. It’s such an unremarkable thing. He doubts it contains anything he wants back, anyway.

“I—okay,” Horatia says smally. Then, so quietly it could almost be lost to the waves, “I’m sorry.”

Harry shakes his head. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Ray. You’re truly incredible for what you _have_ done. It’s an amazing gift. I’m sorry I can’t accept it.”

She still looks defeated and small in Harry's suit jacket, arms wrapped around herself. Harry wants to give her a hug.

“Aw,” Louis says, clearly on the same wavelength when he wraps one lean arm around her, pulling the girl into him. “Don’t be sad, love, you’ve done nothing wrong,” he soothes.

Harry nods adamantly, adding his limbs to the huddle. Horatia hesitantly extracts her own arms from the pile, wrapping them awkwardly around the two.

“Thanks,” she says quietly. “I’m still sorry, but—thank you. And thank you for the invitation here.”

They both murmur vague _no problem, anytime_ ’s and then pull back a bit. The wind is really coming in now; Harry hopes the staff remembered to turn on the space heaters on the porch.

“We have to get rid of it, I think,” Horatia says, staring down at the box in her hands. “Never know who else might want it.”

Harry feels unease creep up his neck at the thought. “Chuck it in, then,” he says, motioning to the water, nearly at their feet.

“You sure?” the girl asks.

“Yeah,” Louis says, answering for him, and that suits Harry just fine. “Into the drink, c’mon.”

A thoughtful last look at the unobtrusive box, and Horatia is winding back. It’s a mighty throw, affected only slightly by the wind, which makes Harry think to question the true weight of the tiny box and its contents. Tricky science, this _zombi_ stuff. He wonders if maybe he should have asked to inspect it at least once.

It’s a moot question now; they see it hit the water some way out, a small _plink!_ of a splash and then nothing.

“Well then,” Louis says, clapping as he turns to face them, cheer restored. “Husband? Jamaican teenager? Back to the festiv—?”

The rest of the sentence is lost as the sea starts to boil, roaring and obvious. Louis whips around.

On second look, Harry realizes the ocean itself isn’t actually boiling. Or, not largely, but a small section has erupted in warm light and noise, disconcertingly like a party jacuzzi. It highlights the greens and blues and salty murkiness of the waves, small detritus showing black, tossing it all into distressing discord. It’s like a hurricane focused precisely in one spot.  Eyes wide, Harry steps back, dragging Horatia and Louis with him.

“What the fuck?” Horatia cries over the noise, summarizing the situation nicely.

Harry thinks fleeing might be in order, the whole situation filling him with acute dread, but his feet don’t seem to want to move. His polished black shoes are rooted firmly in the sand, unsympathetic to his desire to run, and run _now._

Something like a wisp of smoke frees itself from the roiling water, riding the wind coming off the waves. Before the trio has time to react or do much of anything, the wisp hits Harry dead on, scalding hot and _dense._

He’s knocked into the sand, the world going dark in a way he didn’t think it could for him anymore. Harry can hear Louis and Horatia shouting, though he can’t pinpoint what for, and then the pain hits him.

And it _hurts._ It hurts like his collarbone is shattering, like his tendons are snapping one by one, like his breath is being stolen and replaced with _fire._ It hurts like papercuts and food poisoning, like heartbreak and missing the last step going down the stairs, like having your brain smashed in by a spotlight just as you open your mouth to sing.

It hurts, and it hurts, and it _hurts_ , until it doesn’t.

He lays there, gasping in salty air with a newfound desperation, feeling oxygen-starved and dizzy with the memory of pain.

“Harry, Harry, _Harry,_ ” a voice is chanting, and it’s high and clear and the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard, so it’s Louis. It must be Louis.

“Lou,” he croaks, throat feeling utterly destroyed.

“Ray, he’s—fucking hell—he’s okay!” Louis calls up the beach, frantic eyes belaying the statement. “Come _back,_ he’s—”

The girl’s already barreling toward them, a streak of pink chiffon until she skids to her knees by Harry’s side. Her eyes are giant, dark from adrenaline and, probably, fear. Her and Louis take labored breaths over where Harry lays prone.

And it’s all a bit too familiar, this. Harry remembers waking up hazy in the back of an ambulance, the world desaturated like someone had turned down the volume on life, Louis hovering over him with eyes massive as moons and tears streaking his face.

“Ow,” he manages. “I’m—ow—” he says, elbowing up. His whole body feels like it’s fallen asleep and is now awakening,  pins and needles through every inch of him. It’s awful. Louis is on him in an instant, giving him the keenest sense of déjà vu, but he’s not as warm as he usually is in Harry’s arms. Harry worries, clutching the man tighter and, as an afterthought, reaching out to clasp one of Horatia’s chilly hands in his own. “You two alright?” he asks, wincing against his sore back. Sand: surprisingly unforgiving.

“We’re fine, we’re—that thing went _inside_ you,” Louis pants into his shoulder. “Fucking-A, I should lock you in a tower, you disaster-prone _fuck._ ” He reels back, hands squishing Harry’s cheeks slightly. “You were screaming. I’ve never—are you okay? I mean obviously you’re not _okay_ because you just got—like—possessed or something, but—”

“Not,” Harry manages, “not possessed.” He meets Horatia’s eyes over Louis’ shoulder.

“What’s going on? What’s going _on?_ ” someone calls from up the beach, slurring and lackadaisical. It’s Liam, arm in arm with Zayn while Niall struts beside them, clutching a bottle of champagne. They’ve all discarded various parts of their suits, ties and jackets, but the matching groomsmen boutonnieres remain in place, albeit at angles one might describe as “jaunty.”

“Hullo,” Niall addresses Horatia when they’re upon the group huddled in the sand. “What’s happening here?”

Harry, worst liar in history, immediately grunts out “Nothing.” With trembling fingers, he ruffles his hair and feels a truly ridiculous amount of sand shake out.

“Harry—fell,” Louis manages, sitting back further.

Someone is saying Harry’s name softly, trying to get his attention, but his body still feels a bit like it’s thawing out and the boys are drunk and shouty and Louis can’t stop fussing with him, touching him like he’s afraid he’ll dissolve into sea foam, disappear forever.

“Nowhere you can’t follow, Lou,” he says, wincing through the ache in his…everything.

Louis’ fingers are still at his collarbones. “Right,” he says softly. He springs up, hauling Harry up a moment later. Niall, for his part, seems to catch the trend and helps Horatia to her feet. Harry is somehow cognizant enough to eye their clasped hands with something approaching brotherly concern.

It’s then he realizes that Horatia’s the one who keeps calling his name.

“Har _ry,_ ” she tries again.

He blinks, eyes feeling salt-dry, like he’s been crying for a year. “Yeah,” he answers.

“You’re—” she huffs a breath out, and falls silent under the chatter of the boys, one of whom is squeezing Harry’s arse cheekily under the guise of brushing sand off. “Are you breathing?” she asks quietly.

It’s code, Harry realizes, albeit a simple one. And—

“Yeah,” he breathes out slowly. Then he takes another inhale so quickly he nearly coughs, feeling his chest expand with the motion, the complete relief of it.

Horatia’s eyes are sad, which strikes Harry as a little odd, because he’d forgotten, but breathing is _awesome._ Oxygen is _awesome._ And the world is a bit much, right now, the way he can smell and see and feel so much more than he’s used to, but it’s.

It’s also the best he’s felt in years, probably.

Why that is must occur to him at the same time it occurs to Louis, because he’s ignoring how Liam’s insistently jostling his shoulder for attention in favor of staring Harry down, taking in every inch of flesh he knows so well.

“It came back,” Louis says, certain.

“It did,” Harry confirms. No sense in denying it. He’s _alive,_ that’s what this is.

It occurs to him that he thought he’d be sad, only minutes ago, when he’d considered the possibility of it.

“I’m sorry,” Horatia whispers yet again, not meant for the group as a whole.

Harry finds the words. “No. You were—you were right. I feel…better, now.” He flexes his fingers, relishes the regaining of sympathy for each living nerve in each warm finger (everyone else isn’t getting colder, he realizes—he’s just catching up). “Way better. Loads.”

“Holdit,” Zayn says as one word. “Hazza, ‘r you— _crying?_ ”

He is, he can feel it, stinging and wet and leaving the skin tight where the tears dry, spindling his eyelashes and chilling his face.

“Bahh,” Liam says, slapping a hand over Zayn’s mouth and hauling him against his side. “It’s his _wedding!_ Let ‘im cry, Zayner, yeah? Let him have a good cry.”

Louis’ voice shakes when he says, “No, Harry, you’re—you’re _actually_ crying. With tears.”

He sounds…Harry doesn’t know how to describe it. It’s a swirl of tones that, actually, brings to mind the look on Louis’ face when he got on one knee in the middle of the kitchen and said _How about it, Haz?_

 “There have been,” Harry says slowly, when he’s sure the hopeful trepidation on Louis’ face won’t make him keel over from how sweetly it shines, “several _very_ important events that have taken place, this day.”

The boys seem to understand, finally silent as they sway and take him in. Horatia is still biting at her lip like she fears she’s done wrong, but her posture’s more relaxed than it has been all night; she’ll be okay. Louis is crying a bit himself, again, the _sop_. He’s also smiling like daybreak, just for Harry.

Who has, miraculously, been given another shot at this whole life thing.

The waves crash, and the sounds of a party float to their ears, clinking glasses and laughter and music drifting out onto the wind-ruffled ocean.

Without a word, Niall extends the bottle of champagne in his fist.

Harry accepts it gratefully. Takes a mighty swig.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. My fic blog is [protagonist-m](protagonist-m.tumblr.com). Come say hi!


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